A reader just sent us this cameraphone photo of the war of ideas currently being waged on the supermarket checkout racks, which immediately made us flash back to another high-minded debate that played out in the same venue last May. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle, as Pitt reveals in this month's Esquire that the couple's indefinite engagement will end in a wedding ceremony only when "everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able." But that more complex sentiment isn't as easily translatable to a huge, attention-grabbing font, especially since a magazine like Esquire probably considers itself too classy to run with BRAD SAYS HE'LL MARRY WHEN GAYS CAN! cover copy.

While watching the trailer for the upcoming Paul Haggis-penned, Zach Braff vehicle, The Last Kiss, The Not-So-Exciting Life of Brian Palmer blog was struck with a stifling sense of déjà vu. No, they weren't thinking of L'Ultimo bacio, the Italian movie upon which it's based, but rather Braff's own disaffected-young-adult-love-story, Garden State. After painstakingly juxtaposing several highly congruous stills from both films, the Palmer blog then set out to transliterate a definitive handbook for what is quickly becoming a genre unto itself, naming their handy guide Zach Braff's 10 Easy Tips for Writing Films About Twenty-Somethings®. An excerpt:

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 everyone know about the time you spotted Jessica Simpson swooping back into town after a reinvigorating bass-fishing expedition.

It's time again to pause and thank this week's sponsors, whom we adore more than The Family Cruise pretends to love that Asian orphan they rented for their Vanity Fair photo shoot. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and buy a similar level of devotion, see this page.

· ABC is tinkering with its 9/11 miniseries to address the concerns of pissed-off Democrats who are nitpicking over the project's "despicable, irresponsible fraud," and also allegedly considering the "bombshell" move of pulling the program altogether. The network has defended itself against the Dems' claims by saying the movie isn't a documentary, but rather "this funny little thing we threw together because everyone seemed to have a September 11th movie." [Variety]
· Tom Freston is cheered on his way out the door at Viacom, while it's reported that his successor will be getting a $2 million base salary to lead the employees who will never love him the way they loved good old Tom. [THR]
· Hollywoodland's release this weekend signals the unofficial start of Hollywood's post-Labor-Day, pre-real-awards-contender, "Here come the movies that we hope will get an Oscar nomination, but if not, no biggie" season. [Variety]
· News Corp pays billionaire overlord Rupert Murdoch a $21 million bonus, while you will be lucky to get an Olive Garden gift certificate in a holiday card at the end of the year. [THR]
· Oscar producer Laura Ziskin says that with new host Ellen Degeneres, "You're as happy to see her in Hour Three of the show as you are in Hour One." That is, if you've already punctured your eardrums with a letter opener sometime in Hour Two. [Variety]

After last summer's flirty lunch with the NY Daily News' The Lowdown column, in which interchangeable Wedding Crashers naked person Diora Baird revealed her near-instantaneous mastery of the industry's casting customs, we expected her to quickly achieve the effortless superstardom that is her due. More than a year later, however, Baird's publicist seems to sense that her client's subsequent work in projects like Bachelor Party Vegas and Hot Tamale may have been criminally overlooked, and has decided to enlist Page Six in her efforts to restore momentum to a still-promising career:

The producers of Bottoms Up, Paris Hilton's latest straight-to-Blockbuster-bargain-bin-oblivion project, couldn't be more pleased that their star drank that single, three-gallon margarita and got behind the wheel, resulting in the priceless free publicity provided by an obsessively covered DUI arrest, as their movie contains at least two instances of unexpectedly cross-promotable examples of her seemingly alcohol-impaired driving skills. Better rush out and pick up a copy now, before all of the DVD's ironic-gift possibilities are eroded by a new round of Hilton shenanigans not coincidentally reflected in the film's jarringly edited footage.

For all of you who contributed flowers, candles, and Bloomingdale's gift cards to the makeshift sidewalk memorials outside Hyde, Guy's, and the Chateau Marmont last night, your generous spirit and prayers have been answered in the form of a luxury goods miracle: Lindsay Lohan's stolen Hermès handbag has been recovered in the Heathrow Airport parking lot.

In what will probably prove to be the only truly interesting thing that will emerge from the Toronto Film Festival, Sacha Baron Cohen arrived in character to the midnight premiere of Borat: Cultural Learnings from America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan last night on a rickety cart pulled by a quartet of the finest peasant women that Canadian background casting agencies have to offer, much to the delight of the assembled throng of fans. Their excitement was short lived, however, as a projector malfunction so severe that not even on-call technician Michael Moore could restore it to operability ended the screening about forty minutes in. Cohen, Moore, and producer Larry Charles did their best to appease the crowd with an impromptu Q & A, but once it became apparent that no amount of stalling would provide sufficient time to repair the projector, the film's star offered each member of the rowdy audience "five minutes for sex-making with my nice cart-pull prostitutes," a promise that resulted in a hefty hike in his already put-upon peasant day-players' rates and ruined the surprise he'd been saving for Borat's U.S. premiere.

We interrupt today's regularly scheduled nonsense for some incredibly important announcements about a series of "upgrades" to our commenting system:

It looks like Jon Stewart's streak of consecutively hosted Oscars telecasts is going to end at one, as the Academy has this afternoon announced that it's repossessed his tuxedo pants and already handed them over to his successor, daytime television's most nonthreatening, proudly uncloseted chat-lesbian, Ellen DeGeneres. And if the level of humor presented in the press release is any indication of what DeGeneres will bring to her hosting duties, America should brace itself for a magical evening of semi-amusement:

· We don't want to ruin it for you, so just press play above without our words getting in the way of the greatest YouTube experience you'll have all month. [via Gawker]
· Seeing Paris Hilton in handcuffs is pretty good, but would it be too greedy to wish that she would accessorize them with a dank communal cell in the worst prison in Rangoon?
· Jack Bauer: patriot, poet.
· Yes, PBS-loving alcoholics, Huell Howser has a drinking game.
· Page Six breaks our heart by siding with The Donald over our beloved Carolyn. We suppose we'll be OK just as long as Trump continues to employ Robin, the world's greatest fake receptionist.

As Paris Hilton explained in a call to Ryan Seacrest's radio show today, the single, citrusy cocktail that would go down in infamy for besmirching the failed pop starlet's otherwise immaculate reputation was the only thing swishing around in her stomach when police stopped her for "erratic driving." Having spent the better part of a lifetime attuning her senses to the needs of her own body, Hilton explained that she was merely gunning for the nearest In-N-Out burger to sate her hunger pangs—a rendezvous we now know was sadly not meant to be. That didn't stop the crack investigative team at the WOW Report from approaching the fast food franchise in an attempt at ordering up a side of exposé with their animal-style fries:

Just as the scales of party-whorelet media coverage threatened to tip too deeply in Paris Hilton's favor with reports of the heiress' untimely rendezvous with a salt-rimmed Breathalyzer, who should come trotting along with her own headline-grabbing police matter but Hilton's strawberry-patched nemesis, Lindsay Lohan, whom TMZ says is inconsolably distraught after a handbag allegedly containing $1 million in jewelry was reported stolen off her luggage cart at Heathrow Airport:

· Our taste in photography tends to run no more exotic than blurry cameraphone pictures of Kirsten Dunst eating a Cobb salad somewhere on 3rd Street, but the classier folk at Flavorpill recommend the Immaterial World exhibit at the Stephen Cohen Gallery, which "showcases early spiritualist photographers and contemporary image-makers influenced by the supernatural."
· Music round-up: Tool at Staples Center, Los Punkinheads featuring Mike Watt at Spaceland; Katell Keineg at Largo.
· The New Beverly doubles up on Larry Clark movies with back-back showings of Wassup Rockers and Kids.
· Our pals at Employee of the Month, "the best way to numb the pain of your day job through absurdist sketch comedy," do their thing at the Westside Eclectic Comedy Theater.

A couple of reports have come in about a lunchtime brawl at power-eatery Barney Greengrass, complete with grown men rolling around on the floor, brave, intervening waiters, and nearby agents trying not to have their meals ruined by badly aimed fists. Assistants all over town are scrambling to figure out the identity of the combatants to win points with their gossipy bosses, but in the interest of getting to the bottom of this, here's what we've heard:

Just a little while ago, readers of our differently coasted siblings at Gawker sent in reports of Tom Freston's final exit from Viacom's NY headquarters, in which the recently dismissed president and CEO of the company began his head-clearing hiatus from corporate life with a touching send-off from the minions lamenting the sudden end of his benevolent reign:

We don't have a lot of background on the above video (apologies if you've seen it before, but it's new and amazing to us), in which Ben Affleck plops Montreal TV host Anne-Marie Losique in his lap during an interview for Jersey Girl and immediately abandons all promotional duties in favor of the far more important work of molesting the giggling Losique while slurring French-accented come-ons. And, quite frankly, we don't care. Our uncomplicated enjoyment of the following exchange couldn't possibly be enhanced by anything as mundane as "context":

· If you're not currently in Toronto, you probably don't care too much about what's expected to happen at the film festival, but here's an overview anyway. Fingers crossed that J. Lo and her husband (Enrique something, right?) sell their movie. [Variety]
David Letterman's romance with CBS snugglebunny Les Moonves is more torrid than ever, prompting Letterman to sign on for four more years at his newfound soulmate's network. [THR]
As glowingly press-released yesterday, Sony's Amy Pascal was given a new title and had her contract extended well through the release of Stealth III, the story of a Roomba who gains malevolent sentience when struck by a power surge from a faulty wall outlet. [Variety]
MIA onetime TV stars Dana Kim Delaney and Willie Garson get new gigs, keeping them out of SAG/AFTRA's vaunted food stamps program for the time being. [THR]
Wall Street expresses its sadness over Tom Freston's firing by dropping its stock price a combined 7.6 percent over the last two days. Will its heartache ever end? [Variety]

We're constitutionally disinclined from mentioning Clay Aiken twice in a week, much less twice in a single morning, but a reader forwarded this screenshot showing how Aiken's hometown paper's website chose to celebrate the news that the President gave their favorite local boy his first real job, which we are far, far too weak not to share. Try to resist beaming right along with the special little guy as it's explained to him that he's going to go on a field trip to the White House!