We at Defamer realize that Craigslist's "Please check this box if you are actually a famous person anonymously seeking out sexual companionship" celebrity-verification system leaves a lot to be desired, but we can't take the chance that a "huge blockbuster movie star's" request to be humiliated by a less genetically gifted individual might go unanswered, potentially leading to an ugly Santa Monica Boulevard trannie solicitation incident if he's forced to take to the streets to satisfy his unconventional appetites.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's annual Counting of the Gays tallies the exact number of "homosexual" recurring roles you can expect to see on a weekly basis in the upcoming TV season. (Or at least until three episodes in, when, after some focus-group assisted "retooling," the gay character is killed off and replaced with a wacky, straight uncle who refuses to grow up.) According to this year's tally, gay characters have slipped a notch, dropping from last year's ten to a meager nine, a number that has concerned GLAAD representatives resetting their color-coded Homosexual Visibility Advisory to lilac, for "guarded."

Whenever it suits our petty, reality-twisting agenda, Defamer is committed to dedicating the occasional post to the furthering of a reasoned debate on a story we've covered. In response to our Special Correspondent on Onetime Agents Who May Have Bluffed About Their Client Lists' missive about fame-fearing, resume-embellishing World Series of Poker champion Jamie Gold, a former client writes in to defend Gold from blog-enabled character assassination:

Scientologists seize control of the Creative Arts Emmys, awarding the prime-time animation statue to The Simpsons over South Park's Tom Cruise-baiting "Trapped in the Closet" episode. Not particularly caring about the other races but wanting to generally recognize excellence in pay TV programming, the shadowy sect decided to give 17 Emmys to HBO. [Variety]
Marlon Wayans will star in the high-concept DreamWorks comedy Pretty Ugly, in which he'll play a "handsome lifetsyle mogul who wakes up hideously ugly because of a curse," and who, for reasons we will not even attempt to understand, must then disguise himself as a Caucasian baby for the remainder of the movie. [THR]
Pirates of the Carribean wins its seventh straight weekend at the international box office, but was edged out by Snakes on a Plane in the UK. [Variety]
Onetime The OC golden boy Josh Schwartz will once again get a chance to prove his gift for climbing into the minds of teenage girls by writing the pilot for a potential The CW series based on the Gossip Girl books. [THR]
While other networks have begun showing episodes of their series on their own websites the day after they air, Fox is dumping the streaming duties on their local affiliates. [Variety]

We can almost see the barely concealed look of horror that flashed across the 24 casting director's face when deceptively Anglo-monikered Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle star Kal Penn signed in at his audition for a part as an up-and-coming CTU operative who would play a crucial role in a particularly daring, death-cheating Jack Bauer escape from enemy clutches. Upon discovering that the actor was perhaps not as alabaster-complected as they'd hoped ("Hold on, didn't I ask for Harold? What? Harold wasn't white either?"), much shuffling of script pages occurred as they scrambled to find the sides for the part of the Indian programmer to whom the recently deceased Edgar's job was outsourced, but could finally locate only ones for the "guy who is somehow involved with the Islamic guru running the neighborhood mosque and might be the key to a terrorist plot." The talented Penn, of course, shrugged off the switch and knocked it out of the park, saving the casting department the trouble of sitting through a wasted day of auditions with Latino actors they would deem not "ethnic" enough to be mixed up with terrorists.

Drawing upon her many improbable adventures for her recent autobiography, Sudanese-American author and ex-Days of our Lives writer Kola Boof devotes a generous amount of words to the "sex-slave" relationship she had with Osama Bin Laden in the late '90s. Among the claims she makes about her terrorist lover, notes Page Six, is the fact that the most murderous, dangerous man on the planet also happens to harbor a gigantic crush on Whitney Houston:

If you're looking for someone to feel sorry for in the aftermath of Snakes on a Plane's disappointing™ opening weekend, we ask that you look past Samuel L. Jackson, whose Snakes on Two Planes sequel pay raise has been imperiled, or the bloggers who may never again find themselves flown out to fancy Hollywood premieres and handed expensive electronic tokens of appreciation for their viral hitmaking ability, and consider doling out some compassion for New Line's president of distribution, who had to face the media after a disputed $15 million first-place showing:

Snakes on a Plane wasn't the only opportunistically marketed entertainment product riding a groundswell of semi-ironic obsession to suffer through an underwhelming debut this weekend. On last night's Teen Choice awards, world-famous househusband and reformed background dancer Kevin Federline donned his best white-trucker-hat-and- matching-Oxford ensemble for his first-ever public performance. The predictably lip-synced affair was notable mostly for the aspiring rapper's maddening refusal to stumble into the on-stage pyrotechnics and attempt to put out the flames engulfing him by increasing the intensity of his Roger Rabbit steps, an admirable, if ill-advised, refusal to interrupt his flow. In the absence of an accidental K-Fed immolation, there really wasn't much to hold the attention once Britney Spears completed her introduction and removed her overflowing, pregnancy-enhanced cleavage from view, but if pressed for a favorite moment from the performance, we'd have to say it's when the bewifebeatered guy in the front row, presumably a member of Federline's posse, leaps out of his seat and offers some approving fist-pumps at the end of the song, which made our own wildly enthusiastic gesticulations celebrating Federline's triumph seem somewhat uninspired.

There's no point in sugar-coating it, so we'll just come out and say it: The box office numbers don't love you anymore.

· The SoaP premiere: Sam does Stewart. The reviews are in. (Including our own.)
· Jimmy Woods and his opportunistic suckling call it quits. Or does the kid stay in the picture?
· Andy Dick, still licking, biting, and coking his way into America's hearts.
· Haley Joel Osment charged with DUI and pot possession. Our little boy is all grown up!
· Mel Gibson gets three years probation, sits at home in "out-patient" rehab, taunted by the siren call of a well-stocked liquor cabinet.
· What's more humiliating: Pop star relic forced to sweep, or the 100 guys who make a career out of photographing it?
· Did the Butterscotch Stallion mount Kate Hudson?
· Tom Cruise to the rescue. Again.
· Jamie Gold confuses "pathological liar" with "power agent." No biggie—happens all the time.
· We're still trying to figure out how a golf cart hits an SUV with fatal results, and not the other way around.
· Bruno Kirby's dead! Boo!
· The IRS is onto the gift bag racket.
· It doesn't look like there's going to be a MOW after all, but we still like our choice of Dylan Baker to play John Mark Karr.

· Our friends at the WOW Report are having way too much fun with some rubber reptiles, but their Snakes on Cocaine is pretty inspired. Andy Dick totally wants in on that party.
Collider.com's Mr. Beaks, the guy who introduced us to the magic that is Snakes on a Plane with his game-changing "You either you want to see that, or you don't" interview with Samuel L. Jackson, reviews the movie.
SoaP arts and crafts time! Make your own Snakes on a Paper Airplane.
The LAT's Richard Rushfield tells the uplifting tale of the MySpace blogger who overcame New Line's crushing discrimination against female SoaP fans without vanity URLs to finally get invited to the premiere at 10:30 p.m. the night before it occurred. There are happy endings in Hollywood after all.

Because it's so late on a Friday that no one in the industry is at their desks, save the assistants carefully polishing and stowing the gleaming surgical instruments with which their bosses tortured them all week, we don't feel so guilty about passing along a really fun, completely unsubstantiated, wildly un-fact-checked rumor we just heard, in which hot-tempered Hollywood legend Harvey Weinstein is planning on folding the still-shiny Weinstein Co. into MGM and then stepping up to run The Lion. We've helpfully created a graphic for you to print out, clip, and produce should you choose to kick around this piece of idle chatter over cocktails this weekend. Happy gossiping!

Friday
· Keep the cussing going after a satisfying night of motherfucking snakes with Echo Park's Fuck Yeah Fest, curated by the Circle Jerks' Keith Morris, and kicking off its weekend of indie art and live music with an opening night performance by the Jerks themselves.
· Fridays Off the 405 opens up the Getty collection to you as you've never seen it before: drunk, after pounding back a few at a cash bar. With live sets from Matthew Dear, creator of "German-influenced post-post-post disco" and Detroit DJ Ryan Elliot.
· SoaP songwriting contest winners Captain Ahab play The Smell.
Saturday
· Illustrator/artists Jeff McMillan and Ronald J. Llanos's exhibition, How to Wrestle Bears Without Dying, opens at the Ghetto Gloss gallery, though we make no promises you'll walk away with any safer sex tips for burly Gays.
· Sexopolis at the Henry Fonda promises a "XXX-rated" party with "6 Erotic Playstations," and we don't think they're referring to specially refitted Sony video game consoles. (Or maybe they are.) Don't forget to say hi to the Mayor of Sexopolis, legendary porn mensch Ron Jeremy.
· Saturday night music: The Clientele play the Knitting Factory, Canadian General Public-soundalikes Hot Hot Heat play USC's McCarthy Quad, and Throwing Muses toss a few at the Little Radio warehouse.
Sunday
· A little pastrami-eating bird told us if you show up from 10 a.m. - noon today MONDAY* at Canter's of Fairfax, you'll not only get a free bowl of matzo ball soup, you'll witness the birthing of the World's Largest Matzo Ball™. (We don't even want to know how big the Matzo is whose ass that rolls out of!)
· Sunday night music: Nous Non Plus (translation: "us neither") play The Fold in Safari Sam's, classical pianist Christopher O'Riley plays the Ford Amphitheatre and Monster terrorizes Spaceland.
· Enjoy the talents of a pre-gynecomastia-afflicted John Travolta with a sing-along screening of Grease at the Egyptian, and rejoice to the strains of "You're The One That I Want," when Sandy finally pulls that stick out of her ass and sees the slutty, chainsmoking light.

Some stars' contracts demand the most spacious double-wide trailers on the lot, or a nicely appointed office staffed by a phalanx of freshly shaven, glistening man-servants to de-brad scripts on their way to the recycling bin. Over on the Sunset Gower lot, Sarah Silverman, it seems, has had her people arrange for her to have a place where she can safely dispose of balled-up notebook paper containing aborted rape jokes without them commingling with another office's trash. It's so nice to see the comedians we admire finally make it in this business.

As with any self-respecting bad movie, there were no advance press screenings of Snakes on a Plane, so we've had to wait until today to read the reviews. Rotten Tomatoes currently gives it a respectable Tomatometer score of 65%—you wouldn't want any B-horror flick clocking any higher—with a predictable lack of consensus over whether it's so [pick one from column A: good/bad/overhyped] it's [bad/good/overrated]. Here's a round-up of what some of them are saying—and because we are dealing in the always confusing "qualities of badness," we'll also clearly denote whether the reviewer was trying to be positive or negative with their put-downs in each instance:

We begin our report about last night's Snakes on a Plane premiere at the Chinese Theatre, held back by New Line until the very last possible minute to prevent critics from having uncharitable opinions about a movie whose pre-release hype became so overwhelming that the mere mention of the title could induce grand mal seizures in anyone in possession of a valid press credential, with a disclaimer: After almost exactly a year of writing about this movie and its unstoppable march across the internets, our weariness of various combinations of the words "motherfucking," "snakes," and "plane" may have lowered our expectations to an absurdly low point. All we wanted from the 'Lil Airborne Reptilian Infestation Movie That Could was for at least one guy to have his genitals fanged-up while in the process of bodily waste elimination, and God bless their pandering little hearts, they delivered the mandatory junk-chomping scene with cynical aplomb. Once that lone condition was satisfied, we were more than happy to laugh at lines of dialogue both intentionally and accidentally hilarious, hurl ourselves forward in our seat with delight when the areola on a bare, surgically enhanced breast became a targeting mechanism for a mamba strike, and generally stop giving a shit about how someone might smuggle several hundred angry predators aboard a red-eye even with the aid of the most corrupt of airport security regimes. Motherfucking snakes were on the motherfucking plane (see how easy it is to fall back into it?), they were biting everything in sight, and that was enough for us, as we are constitutionally incapable of not enjoying a well-executed fake-titty attack. Call us easy to please or New Line Kool-Aid chuggers, but we can't see any reason why anyone who would be interested in the film based on the title alone shouldn't get a little drunk and watch Samuel L. Jackson shout expletives while he carries out his snake-elimination duties. That's all we can muster by way of a review.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are crafted by you, our readers, and posted throughout the week. Send them often to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let the world know about the time you gave Access Hollywood's Billy Bush a locker room flab inspection.

As a fitting bookend to yesterday's Everything I Know About Drugs I Learned From Hollywood, Cracked.com has collected the "5 Most Obviously Drug-Fueled TV Appearances Ever." Included is this 1980 Richard Pryor interview on the set of Stir Crazy, featuring the comedian soaring out of his melon on what must have been a healthy portion of that day's dumptruck delivery of cocaine. Among his tooth-gnashing, head-slapping revelations, "I had seven pussies for lunch," "Gene Wilder is shit. He's a faggot. He can suck my dick I don't care," and the piece de resistance, an impromptu jerk-off mime at the 6:30 mark accompanied by sensual "aahs" and "oohs." The TV landscape has certainly mellowed since then, with the best we can hope for these days being the occasional Daily Show clip in which Owen Wilson acts like he's been mildly incapacitated by a green-room bong hit.

We would never urinate in front of our advertisers while offering them narcotics, for that would be off-putting and illegal. However, should we ever have the chance, we would happily lick their perfect faces after bragging about our imminent sexual conquest of Farrah Fawcett, for then they would truly feel desired. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and join our after-party grope session, see this page.

Sundance organizers are "thrilled" that the IRS is cracking down on gift bags, while recently re-elected AMPAS president Sid Ganis is sweetly naive about how the crackdown might affect A-list actors' desire to show up at the Oscars and read bad awards presentation Telepromtper copy: "Presenters appear on our show because they want to be part of the Academy Awards, to help us celebrate our art form." [Variety]
The CW assures its affiliates that it has an unspecified "contingency plan" for America's Next Top Model should labor disputes continue past the 13 already-produced episodes of this "cycle," consisting mostly of stopping the camera and shouting at the contestants, "We're gonna cut off your bottled water allowance if you skinny bitches don't do something interesting right now.". [THR]
Will nearly a solid year of online hype boost Snakes on a Plane to a huge opening, or just an OK, B-horror-movie one? That's the motherfucking million dollar question, isn't it? [Variety]
NBC files a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming the WGA has instructed showrunners to refuse to provide material for webisodes, believing that existing contracts allow them to bleed writers for as much web material as they please. [THR]
The "Disco Duck" guy is returning to L.A. radio. Please refrain from soiling yourself from excitement. [Variety]