· Pseudonymous blogger/crew member Peggy Archer snapped this picture on Stage 24 of the Paramount lot, reminding us that not everyone on a sitcom set loves the writers. You really don't want to know what craft services does to the donuts at the table read in the moments before the writers descend. [via LAist]
· Wouldn't you expect that The Darkness would brag about their singer going to rehab, just for continuity of schtick?
· Between the earlier story about the snakes in the movie theater and this one about the guy biting a boy's genitals, this Local 6 website
is a pretty fucking scary place.
Screenwriter happily cashes check, later regrets allowing a studio to convince him to rewrite history to make American audiences happy.
· Every breakfast tastes more fucking delicious with Deadwood pancakes, cocksucker. [via BoingBoing]

Skeletal Viacom executive presence Sumner Redstone has finally tinkled the gilded bell beside his desk, the sound of which let his minions know that he is displeased with Tom Cruise and that his Paramount Pictures movie studio must immediately sever its ties with the actor's production company. As security personnel in riot gear swarm upon Cruise/Wagner's offices on the Melrose lot and commence the tear-gas and rubber-bullet attack informing their employees that their services are no longer required, Redstone told the Wall Street Journal that Cruise's recent predilection for couch-abuse, anti-psychiatry pamphleteering, and the siring of mysteriously unseen infants harmed M:i:III's profitability, an unforgivable sin that triggered the end of the studio's 14-year relationship with the star:

Back in February, Brittany Murphy gushed to People about her "devastatingly handsome" fiance, a best boy grip named Joe Macaluso she met on the set of Little Black Book ("best boy"—how cute it that?) with whom she "made it to date 17 without kissing." Well, in keeping with the delayed gratification theme of their whirlwind romance, People is now reporting the wedding has been called off, guaranteeing the two will likely make it all the way to their death beds without ever knowing the pleasures of marital coitus:

Warner Bros. learned the hard way this summer that when audiences line up to see a movie called Superman Returns, what they expect to see is a super man returning to do super things, not a touchy-feely supermeditation on a single mom's efforts to balance work and family. Even WB studio head Alan Horn would later admit, "We should have had perhaps a little more action to satisfy the young male crowd." The Spider-Man franchise has had better success in that department, but the third installment is leaving nothing to chance: After piling on multiple love interests and villains, James Franco recently revealed to MTV News that director Sam Raimi is bringing back the cast for reshoots:

· Music round-up: Mighty Six Ninety at Keyclub; The Lashes and Foreign Born at Safari Sam's; The Colour at the Troubadour; Rick Ortiz presents Noche de Rock at the House of Blues.
· Impassioned, participatory cries of "Adrian!" will drift out over the Pacific as the Santa Monica Pier hosts a screening of Rocky at its "drive-in" movie night.
· Best Week Ever's Doug Benson hosts a free night of comedy at Red Rock on Sunset with Ian Bagg, Mike Muratore, and Matt Walker. Well, it's not quite free, as they'll be filming the performance. Consider the comped cover your pay for being a background performer.

Wicked Chops Poker's blog points us to today's Las Vegas Sun story about a lawsuit filed against fame-fearing, resume-embellishing former agent and World Series of Poker champion Jamie Gold by Crispin Leyser, a "television producer" (given Gold's disputed background, we feel the need for ironic quotes on Hollywood occupations referenced in the story) claiming that Gold promised him half of his $12 million winnings for arranging the high-powered celebrity presence of Matthew "Scooby" Lillard and Dax "Punk'd" Shepherd for Bodog.com, who in return paid for Gold's seat at the tournament. According to the lawsuit, Leyser has voicemails from Gold promising him his 50-percent cut of the final table winnings (after taxes, naturally):

At last night's Grauman's Chinese Theatre premiere of Beerfest, once octogenarian star Cloris Leachman was gently lowered back onto her feet by director Jay Chandrasekhar after completing a potentially life-threatening, five-minute keg stand, she punctuated the unexpected display of her incredible drinking capacity by hoisting aloft the fully drained keg and emitting a belch so powerful that it cracked the slab of concrete in the nearby courtyard containing Judy Garland's handprints. "Top that, you little bitches," challenged Leachman as she strolled past her much younger, tragically lightweight castmates and into the screening.

In the outside chance you failed to check YouTube for any up-to-the-minute announcements regarding the world's most glamorous and admired fart-in-a-mitten, then perhaps it is up to us to alert you to the fact that Paris Hilton's debut album, "Paris," drops today. And while the artist herself has been sent into fits of open weeping over the sheer intensity of its hotness, less partisan reviews have been mixed, with critics sharply divided over exactly which numbered sign of the apocalypse its arrival signals. A "Paris" review round-up :

The Toronto Film Festival line up is announced, featuring offerings from up-and-comers Ridley Scott, Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Jude Law, Sandra Bullock, Sigourney Weaver, Brad Pitt, and Gwyneth Paltrow. [Variety]
· In a joint interview with ICM head Jeff Berg, Chris Silbermann, partner in recently acquired boutique agency BWCS, describes the transaction: "This is not an acquisition of need; this is a merger of desire." You may now stab yourself in the ear with a letter opener to halt the flood of images of pieces of Armani suits dropping to the floor, followed by the two merger-crazed agents rushing into each other's arms, finally ready to consummate their deal of passion. [THR]
· Paramount elevates MTV Films and Nickelodeon Movies from "studio-based production companies" to "full-fledged divisions." Nothing gets us more excited than a nice, hot corporate restructuring story. [Variety]
The Weinstein Co. picks up the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut up and Sing, about the fallout from the country group's fateful decision to express an unfavorable public opinion about George W. Bush. [THR]
To appease the nation's anti-smoking lobby, Turner Broadcasting will edit out smoking in classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons
that air in the U.K., such as Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, and Scooby-Doo, as well as completely erase from existence the character of Mr. Spacely, George Jetson's cigar-chomping boss. [Variety]

Snakes on a Plane's disappointing™ inability to reach the $20 million opening weekend milestone triggered New Line's desperation "Snakes in a Theater" viral marketing campaign, in which a variety of deadly serpents will be released into multiplexes in underperforming regions, building the kind of word-of-mouth buzz that the studio wasn't able to translate from internet obsession into ticket sales. No one was bitten by the two rattlesnakes employed in the campaign's initial run at the AMC Desert Ridge in Phoenix, a misfire that New Line officials blamed on the exhibitor's failure to saturate its popcorn in the snake-provoking pheromones with which it was provided, but promised "six to ten" in-theater fatalities by the film's crucial second-weekend screenings.

It's hard to believe that twelve seasons of Survivor have come and gone without a single player having been bludgeoned to death in the dead of night with an immunity idol, only to be strung up in a banana tree as a warning to anyone who might think of bogarting that evening's rice ration. But that long-awaited, TV-MA episode could finally arrive in the coming season, when, if the internet rumors are correct, the added, incendiary element of dividing teams according to race could ratchet up the tension considerably:

Last night at Hyde, Paris Hilton and YouTube were crowded into a bathroom stall, finishing off the last of Tube's eightball (please, you think Paris is sharing her stash?) while killing time waiting for their plate fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies to arrive at their booth, when Hilton accidentally struck her head on the toilet paper dispenser after standing up too quickly. "I have, like, an idea?" said the heiress, her brand-building synapses now activated by blunt cranial trauma. "OK, here goes: I promote my new album on your web video situation. You get to look like you have a business model, and I get to have a camera pointed at me so I can say things like, 'YouTube is the hottest thingy on the whatever.' Maybe we can even do videos with me standing in a studio, pretending like I made some music. We both win and stuff." YouTube, of course, distracted by its pleasantly tingling gums and elated just to be sharing a private moment with one of celebritydom's most accomplished business minds, agreed immediately, offering to give Hilton's ads prominent placement on their front page, and an unholy partnership was born.

Today's LAT Column One story on marijuana law specialist Allison Margolin, "L.A. dopest attorney," should send producers scrambling to option the rights to the Harvard-Law-by-way-of-Beverly-Hills-High grad's Legally Blonde meets Half Baked life story. Writer Maura Dolan has even outlined the opening scene of the inevitable screenplay, complete with dual dog-grooming, feet-rubbing "Boy Fridays" (one to eventually be portrayed as her best, poodle-stroking Gay, the other as the uptight law student with a deep commitment to reforming outdated anti-drug laws), a pre-trial automotive complication, and perhaps most crucially, the Telling Accessory belying the sharp legal mind we'll come to know and love:

NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove once again finds himself the vessel through which incarcerated, would-be stage parent Michael Lohan delivers the stunning results of the Lindsay-inspired creative powers unleashed by his prison term, as the source of the actress's profound daddy issues follows up last year's jailhouse ditty with this haunting, beautifully rendered cartoon illustrating the nefarious forces conspiring to keep father and daughter apart. We've helpfully labeled some of the artistic representations of evil besetting Michael and Lindsay on all sides to save you from taxing your interpretive faculties so early in the morning: the CAA agent removing any troubling parental interference in his earner's career; muscular, demonic Cocaine demanding worship by dangling a cross; menacing Dehydration, ready to punish a long day of hard work with the touch of his desiccating, swoon-inducing finger; the Paparazzi, who ensure that no picked-over meal at The Ivy goes undocumented; and Paris Hilton, the dark, omnipresent figure always looming on the fringe of Lindsay's troubles. Note also the single shoe in the foreground, a heartbreaking totem of the footwear-related violence that resulted in Lohan's forced separation from his beloved little girl. We could easily dedicate years to deconstructing imagery this complex.

· A reader chided us for not paying proper attention to today's LAT business section cover story (sorry, we got tangled up in rubber snakes) on Paradigm's Sam Gores, especially to the gigantic photo of the agency head in his huge office. Observes our just-appointed Defamer Special Correspondent on The Misallocation of Talent Agency Square Footage, "In a company with assistants LITERALLY in closets, he's in an office that takes up half a floor." We're just wondering which of Gores' billionaire brothers bought him all of that beautiful furniture.
What Happens in Metropolis Stays in Metropolis is like grabbing the Man of Steel's cape and hanging on for dear life as he flies through Vegas, drugging the occasional sexual partner and unintentionally killing the odd hooker.
We can easily see Paramount handing out this pamphlet extolling the budget-conscious virtues of Dumpster diving to its freshly shitcanned employees.
The AP writer covering the Teen Choice Awards was obviously high when he wrote that Kevin Federline's performance "wasn't genius, but it wasn't half bad either." Or if we're going to give him the benefit of the doubt, momentarily mesmerized by Britney Spears' cleavage.

According to LA Observed, this year's Sunset Junction festival will finally take much-needed steps to ensure that visiting celebrities have a place where they can avoid awkward interactions with the teeming masses in the VIP-level comfort to which they are accustomed, eliminating the shame and inconvenience of having to hide from overeager fans behind the butch, assless-chaps-clad mannequins at the bondagewear booth:

• This Bud's For Me [Spare Room]

· In the latest installment of their Great to Be Nominated series celebrating Hollywood's missed-Best-Picture-by-that-much masterworks, the Academy screens Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. [via flavorpill]
· The awesome What Made Milwaukee Famous at the Troubadour; Deadsy at the Roxy; Burning Brides and 400 Blows at the Viper Room.
· Tommy Chong, patron saint of those wrongfully incarcerated over their love for an artfully crafted bong, signs The I Chong: Meditations From the Joint at Vroman's Bookstore.

Through Rosie O'Donnell's blog and accompanying Flickr page, you too can experience the disappointment of having your "gay family fun cruise" passion project, All Aboard!, passed over for special recognition by the Creative Emmys. Most of the captions are fairly self-explanatory, though we're not exactly sure why the first photograph is titled "buddy hackett." (Our inclination is to tell Rosie she's being entirely too hard on herself in that very chic and slimming outfit.) But while a picture can tell the proverbial thousand words, it's O'Donnell's hyperminimalist Blogku verse that completes the bittersweet story:

On Friday, writer TJ Sullivan ignored the self-preservation instincts that allowed him to survive to adulthood by braving the swarming, Sharpie-wielding throng gathered at the West L.A. Best Buy, where self-contained celebutard industry Paris Hilton was signing her new CD. (We imagine that those seeking to have copies of the book she didn't write, bottles of her perfume, or One Night in Paris-branded, Swarovski crystal-encrusted, rubberized replicas of her vagina personalized weren't turned away. She's nothing if not fan-friendly.) Unsurprisingly, Sullivan discovered a poorly organized event that quickly plunged him into the depths of existential despair over the plight of those who'd waste hours of their time waiting for an audience with Hilton: