Today's LAT is all too eager to push Tom Freston into a new gig, polling a number of friends, associates, and analysts about recently pinkslipped Viacom CEO's next career move and the prospects for making his "second act" more glorious that the one upon which Sumner Redstone so unexpectedly dropped the curtain this weekend. The legendarily laid-back Freston, however, isn't going to going to cave to pressure, strap on the first Armani straightjacket he's offered, and hop right back on the 20-hour-a-day treadmill. Instead, he's going to take some time off to find himself:

Merely donning a set of Kevlar wings and having a teamster raise and lower you by rope-and-pulley may not be enough to fully cement your status as Earthbound Angel, but gifted sonbgird and frequent online romance seeker Clay Aiken will soon be able to fully lay claim to the title:

Just in case you found yourself wondering about Paris Hilton's exact whereabouts in the moments before her margarita-tinged wheeze worked its way through a Swarovski crystal-encrusted Breathalyzer tube, a Defamer operative dropped this note in our inbox last night before news of Hilton's DUI arrest went public, after spotting her and the usual, club-monkey suspects at a charity event at Dragonfly:

One had the feeling that there were only so many times that category-defining celebutard Paris Hilton could emerge from a club, teeter over to that night's luxury automobile with paparazzi documenting every wobbly, stiletto-hindered step, and swerve off into the night before a cop would give her the chance to fail a Breathalyzer. And last night at 12:31 a.m., Hilton finally arrived at the drunkutante ball, blowing a .08 (the minimum for a California DUI, we'll have you know), and earning a very brief stay at a Hollywood police station to be processed for her driving under the influence charge. Luckily, Hilton remembered to pack travel-sized publicist Elliot Mintz in her purse that evening, who immediately got to work explaining how such an unthinkable thing could happen to such a good girl. Reports TMZ:

· A trio of Vanity Fair alternate covers, in Dennehy, Grey, and Cracked Etch-A-Sketch flavors.
· Michael Lohan had to use his estimable powers of prison yard persuasion to get his fellow inmates to stop jerking off to pictures of his daughter. He's probably not going to be too happy when one of them gets his hands on these.
· The stingray finally apologizes for robbing the world of the Crocodile Hunter.
· Nikki Finke notes that Amy Pascal was supposed to get that fancy promotion a year ago, and that Sumner Redstone is pretty sure he's not going anywhere for another 20 to 30 years.
· Little panda sneeze!

Kevin Costner was invited today to join some of the greatest luminaries in cinema history by leaving an impression of his hands, feet, and—in a spontaneous and unsolicited gesture that we're pretty sure marks a Hollywood first—his face in wet cement outside the Chinese Theater. The 51-year-old, mortar-encrusted actor acknowledged his good luck in living out every man's dream to "stare down the bully, kiss the girl, and save the day," though with a major release right around the corner and showing few signs of slowing down, we're all but certain his prolific career will see many more happy endings to come.

This morning (seems like days ago now, doesn't it?), Vanity Fair editor Jane Sarkin, the brave soul who spent five days deep inside the Cruise compound without the benefit of a Graydon Carter-supplied armed detail, talked to infamously glib Tom tormentor Matt Lauer about her experience in getting the coveted puff piece story on the Today Show. We'll spare you a transcription of the proceedings, which you can effortlessly watch in the space above these words, but we'll point out that Sarkin claims to have met 15 (!) members of the Holmes clan during her visit, none of whom made even a token attempt to chew though their bonds and escape into the nearby canyons. If nothing else, baby Suri certainly seems to have brought a new sense of peace to the Cruise household.

• Justin Timberlake Smells Like Teen Spirit House of Blues [YouTube via Stereogum]

· Music round-up: Deerhoof at the Troubadour, James Brown with Angie Stone at the Hollywood Bowl; Snowden at the Silverlake Lounge.
· Learn all about how Arnold Schwarzenegger rode the strategic repetition of his most beloved movie catch phrases to the Caleeforneeya Governator's Mansion as LAT political reporter Joe Mathews reads from his book, The People's Machine, at Vroman's.
· The Los Angeles International Short Film Festival is in full swing at the ArcLight, where you can see the possibilities of the form that lie beyond the typical YouTube cell-phone camera production.

With industry news lately so dominated by tear-soaked tales of high-level executives being put out of their misery by pinkslip-wielding, immortal corporate overlords, we welcome today's announcement that Sony's Amy Pascal (whose box office hot streak healed the wounds left by last summer's string of bombs) was given the fancy new title of co-chairman and had her contract extended through 2011, ensuring another half-decade of festive, movie-themed premiere costumes. Throw your arms wide and join in the group hug of recent success warmly rewarded:

Vanity Fair cover model Suri Cruise (center) knows that talent borrows, but fashion genius steals, mercilessly—but fabulously—copping the baby toupee (right) look Ella Bleu Travolta (left) rocked so confidently years ago. Little Suri's inborn sense of style will quickly become the envy of all the other children in the Celebrity Centre's Day Care and Infant Auditing facility.

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 local tree-squatter Daryl Hannah roasting cosmic marshmallows by a Burning Man campfire.

Amid a flurry of media criticism, and with corporate sponsors dropping like so many swatted tsetse flies, reality TV wunderkind producer Mark Burnett finds himself forced to justify his decision to pit race against race on the new season of Survivor. Burnett has finally spoken up in defense of his humanitarian vision, through the unlikely (and mostly unread outside of the TV business) forum of the letters section of Cynthia Turner's Cynopsis. An excerpt:

Since we haven't been able to locate our own copy of Vanity Fair's much-anticipated All-Cruise Issue (what kind of a godless wasteland do we live in, where piping-hot copies of VF aren't immediately available?), we're forced to dine only on the meager morsels doled out by the magazine's website. There seems to be some good news in their twenty-two jam-packed pages of Cruise coverage, as childbirth seems to have at least temporarily cured Katie Holmes of the crippling expressive disorder that once limited her vocabulary to simple words communicating positive feelings about her captivity. Teases VanityFair.com:

· Apple and Amazon prepare for their cyberspace deathmatch in the movie downloading space. Pretend to care about where you will eventually download your copy of Talladega Nights. [Variety]
Katie Couric's maiden CBS Evening News broadcast delivers news timeslot ratings the likes of which haven't been seen since 1998. Plans are currently underway to have Couric inserted into all of the network's programming until the Nielsen surge dissipates. [THR]
Variety gives a little background on new Viacommies Philippe Dauman and Thomas Dooley so that we can start thinking of them as individuals, not just the faceless Redstone-puppets who replaced Tom Freston. [Variety]
Rebecca DeMornay gets a chance at HBO-assisted career rehabilitation (let's let Kudrow's failed pay-cable comeback fade from memory for a moment) by signing up for David Milch's new show, John from Cincinnati. [THR]
The Mask co-stars Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz will join up in the romantic comedy A Little Game, at least until Focus Features shuts down the project as the costs of filming Carrey's signature 100-takes-of-improv scenes get out of hand, claiming some kind of symbolic stand against escalating star salaries. [Variety]

Upon a cursory first glance at Annie Leibovitz's Vanity Fair photos of the Cruise family, we initially believed the couple's puzzling decision to be photographed with both Asian and Causcasian babies was either rooted in Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' inability to resolve a spat about their individual infant-rental preferences, or, at worst, a regrettable continuity error that should have been corrected somewhere in the editing process. But after viewing this image spanning pages 284 and 285 of the new VF issue, we now think we're starting to understand their creative vision: Suri Cruise is not just Tom and Katie's fake baby, she's the entire world's fake baby. She is their long-delayed gift to us all; regardless of our color, creed, or nationality, there is a Suri for everyone.

Dr. Drew Pinsky—always available on his call-in radio show to lend a compassionate ear or some valuable advice regarding the pleasure-enhancing benefits of removing one's retainer before performing oral sex—has released the data of an ongoing study he's been overseeing at USC. Setting out to answer the ancient, chicken-and-egg riddle of whether fame creates the narcissist or vice versa, the hallowed halls of science have finally spoken: It seems that abnormally high levels of preexisting amour propre run throughout both aspiring and accomplished celebrities, with an off-the-charts spike occuring among the subgenus of Realitus famewhoreum, aka, reality TV "stars":

Lest you believe that octogenarian Viacom serial killer Sumner Redstone feels nothing each time he unsheathes his jewel-encrusted dagger and buries it hilt-deep between the shoulder blades of an unsuspecting victim, Redstone shares with THR the emotional torment that gripped him as lured his latest corporate quarry to his doom:

While we correctly anticipated the inexplicable appearance of an Asian baby in our mock-up of the Vanity Fair photos of The Family Cruise, we clearly missed the mark on which iconic image of a Beatle Annie Leibovitz would reference in her Suri spread. We apologize for this unfortunate blind-spot in our predictive powers.

· "Lindsay, I'm your boyfriend. And I have my hands all over your breasts. You still sticking to your story that they're real?"

· The Crocodile Hunter's tragic death by stingray was caught on film, leading the AP to worry, "In the age of instant Web videos, might it get out?" NBC executives are already monitoring YouTube for its appearance, hoping to get a leg up on optioning it for a series.

· Meanwhile, a largely unsympathetic animal kingdom speaks out on Irwin's passing.

· Publicity-shy Basic Instinct screenwriter Joe Eszterhas thinks Val Kilmer is an imbecile, Michael Douglas is dumb, and that Sharon Stone once unintentionally engaged in water sports with a movie crew.

· Gawker mascot (and onetime Defamer statistician*) Andrew Krucoff uncovers a viral Jackass 2 promotion. [*We only claim a relationship when he urinates on things.]