· We think we know what Jeremy Piven wished for when he blew out the candle on his birthday cake this weekend: For Lindsay Lohan to put on a flesh-colored bikini and do her best recreation of a really creepy kiddie porn photo shoot.

· This Craiglist ad seeking a "palm leaf oscillator" for a "high powered industry executive" may be a joke, but we suspect a real position involving the manual temperature control of a spoiled studio type will be created by morning.

To promote Fox Searchlight's small scale comedy Little Miss Sunshine, the Fox marketing department had someone drive the movie's iconic VW bus around town. An eyewitness managed to snap a cameraphone photo of the saffron-hued promobile, which, through either faulty mechanics or bad driving, managed to make afternoon traffic on Pico Blvd. even worse:

The Defamer Special Correspondent On Sneaky Protest Tactics has filed this brief report on the ongoing writers' strike at America's Next Top Model, complete with photographs documenting how the picketers have resorted to enlisting some ringer T&A to draw some attention to their cause:

Fresh off the heels of AdjectiveGate, the modifier-related scandal that rocked the world of TV awards show nomination procedures forever, comes yet another, shocking Emmy brouhaha. According to one irate GoldDerby message board poster, Ellen Burstyn's nominated performance for HBO's Mrs. Harris lasts a grand total of 15 seconds:

When we tossed off an end-of-day link to this $350 Snakes on a Plane-inspired necklace—designed, incidentally, by a real, live, and credited Snakes on a Plane cast member!—we thought: OK, a bit overpriced, but cute enough. It was soon pointed out to us that we somehow missed the $3,900.00 version (pictured) also on offer at the website, a luxury bauble priced out of the range of pretty much everyone but the foul-mouthed guy who's actually flinging interloping reptiles around the economy class cabin. Diamond-encrusted snakes on an eighteen-carat-gold plane makes us so very, very tired.

· Duncan Sheik at Troubadour; Mighty Six Ninety at the Key Club;The Watkins Family Hour at Largo.
· Essayist Romie Angelich hosts readings by Jill "Six Feet Under" Soloway, Melanie "Was on SNL, You'd Totally Recognize Her" Hutsell, and Elaine Soloway at Borders in Westwood. Meanwhile, TC Boyle signs his new novel, Talk Talk, at Book Soup.
· Dark Delicacies hosts a DVD signing of Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, a documentary about the most famous series of movies to ever coax slasher scares from a spray-painted William Shatner mask, with all manner of personnel from the various Halloween movies in attendance.

Let us once again sing the praises of YouTube, continuous font of unexpectedly riveting video goodies. We just stumbled across this video blog interview with just-fired Buena Vista head Nina Jacobson that was posted yesterday, but obviously conducted before the tragic events of last Wednesday—and which, improbably, includes a discussion of firings from earlier in her career. Take a disorienting two minutes to watch the video, during which you'll feel as if you've hopped in a time machine that travels only about a week into the past, to a more innocent, happier time in which studio executives don't get whacked in the delivery room.

We suppose that if a studio is going to spend millions of dollars on a movie premised on its protagonists being flushed down a toilet, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to show pride in the project by erecting a monument to it in the lobby of one of their buildings. But at a place where the sloppy disposal of employees has become something of a trademark, people are going to wonder if that giant commode is hooked up to plumbing strong enough to more neatly eliminate the downsized during the next round of layoffs.

Today's sightings item in Page Six includes this exciting update about superproducer Brian Grazer's latest adventures in singledom, in which he entertained an unnamed companion at one of Malibu's finest restaurants:

It would pretty much take Mo'nique being dragged off a plane amidst concern she's some kind of terrorist threat for us to take notice of the plus-sized Pepsi pitchwoman, which is precisely what happened as she boarded a United flight headed to her guest hosting gig on The View. From ET Online:

Warner Bros TV finally caves to iTunes peer-pressure and will provide series like Friends for downloading on the service, meeting the demands of fans who can't be bothered to catch the reruns that are broadcast roughly sixty times per day on TV and basic cable. WB is also offering recently aborted pilot Aquaman, which new network The CW neglected to include on its fall schedule. [Variety]
Fox Interactive Media President Ross Levinsohn now speaks exclusively in the dialect of Myspace's legion of fourteen-year-old users, declaring the online service "so not about social networking anymore" while discussing his plan to better harness the site's influence for News Corp evil. [THR]
· Quickly running out of employees to lay off, Disney buys the Indian children's television channel Hungama, then immediately fires its entire staff. Layoff jokes: somewhat funny because everyone in this town is afraid of losing his or her job! [Variety]
Madonna's husband happily accepts his pigeonholing as a hacky director of gangster films, signing on to rewrite and direct the "gangster odyssey" Static for Columbia Pictures. [THR]
Sean Hayes and his producing partner move their production company from NBC Universal to CBS Paramount Network TV, where the actor will spend the next year turning down offers to play sassy, gay sidekicks while waiting for better roles that never materialize. [Variety]

The writers, director, and actors who deferred their usual paychecks in hopes that they would one day roll around naked in the big piles of money generated by little-heavy-handed-racism-parable-that-could Crash are still waiting for Bob Yari, the film's producer and alleged profit-hoarder, to make their dreams of high currency denominations rubbing up against well-oiled flesh come true. But according to the agent for one of the aggrieved actors, Yari should have done a better job of showing them some love while accusations of Harvey Weinstein-style "Hollywood accounting" are flung back and forth between camps. Reports the NY Times:

It's been a big week for celebrity-stalking, lunatic sex-worker Dessarae Bradford, who's reached new levels of notoriety since bumrushing Colin Farrell in the midst of a Tonight Show interview. Bradford explained in a statement that the accosting was necessary in order to properly serve her latest lawsuit, and promised even more clarification at a press conference to be held yesterday at noon. NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove offers a report from the scene:

To read the various media accounts of the contents of The Man Who Heard Voices, the biography of M. Night Shyamalan's Christ-like struggle to realize his vision for Lady in the Water in face of opposition from vision-stifling, low carb soup-serving Philistines like erstwhile Buena Vista studio head Nina Jacobson, the tome is an utterly inexhaustible supply of anecdotes illustrating the tragically misunderstood director's insecurity. In a column about "the outbreak of Shyamaladenfreude" following Lady's disappointing™ opening at the box office this weekend, the LAT's Patrick Goldstein spotlights some more illustrations of the insecureteur's congenital neediness:

Maybe it's too early in the morning to consider any photograph whose subject is a shirtless Jeremy Piven, but there's something strangely poignant, something that bears our attention, about this frozen moment from his birthday party in Malibu this weekend. It's impossible to know what Piven was thinking as he stared somberly at the cake placed before him, but we imagine that in the instant before reaching some kind of breakthrough about the meaning of what he's accomplished in his 41 years, he suddenly drew himself back from the precipice of epiphany, plunged both hands deep into its chocolatey recesses, and smearing its delicious icing across his face like warpaint, stalked off to do a dozen tequila shots out of the navel of the semi-naked Lindsay Lohan lingering nearby. This was a party, after all, and not the time for quiet introspection.

· Lex Luthor sings! No, not Spacey. We've already seen what he can do with a microphone.
For around $500 per day (plus bonus for exposed skin), you too can pretend to be your favorite Wilson brother by hiring a butt double.
Lionel Richie is a "basket case" over media chatter about how painfully skinny daughter Nicole Richie is, but not to the point where he'll actually, you know, make her eat something.
With matter transport technology still woefully inadequate for the task of disposing of human remains, Scotty's body will get a more traditional rocket launch to its final resting place in October.
· Today in overpriced, movie-inspired merchandise: the $350 Snakes on a Plane on a Necklace, and the $4,495 Pirates 2 bag.

We couldn't let the day slip away from us without pointing out the LAT's heartwarming tale of Universal co-chairs Marc Shmuger and David Linde, who were hastily thrown together to replace freshly poached studio head Stacey Snider, but who nonetheless saw their "arranged marriage" of convenience blossom into a beautiful, full-blown love affair. The Times drops us into the special moment when the two men made the magical transition from co-workers to life partners:

Photographs of Matthew McConaughey's recent coastal yoga routine continue to offer inspiration to legions of Photoshop blasphemists everywhere, as a highly ambitious animated gif submitted to a BestWeekEver.tv contest imagines a Star Wars universe in which the Rebels leave the Millenium Falcon behind to fly a shirtless, sand-encrusted McConaughey on a suicide mission to destroy the Death Star. Ultimately, however, McConaughey's daredevil pilots fail in their mission to use his beach body powers to fire two proton torpedoes down a thermal exhaust port that leads directly the reactor core, and the actor meets an untimely, sexy end between Darth Vader's crosshairs.

Fans of Entourage are already more than familiar with the work of Rex Lee, the actor who portrays Lloyd, Ari Gold's much-abused, yet fiercely loyal, assistant. AfterElton.com interviewed the openly gay Lee about the part, and while he promised Lloyd will be on the receiving end of many more flying staplers and almost-too-skillfully-delivered pejorative comments from Jeremy Piven regarding his race and/or sexuality, don't expect the writers to give the long-suffering agent-in-training a sex life any time soon:

· Music round-up: Gnarls Barkley at Avalon; Jurassic 5 at House of Blues Sunset; Sparta at the Viper Room; Immaculate Machine at Spaceland.
· Notables such as Andre Agassi, Pam Shriver, and five-time US Open champion/host Jon Lovitz will be on hand at the celebrity tennis and entertainment event tonight at UCLA's Straus Stadium. Laugh if you will at Lovitz's involvement, but know that he has a killer serve-and-volley game.
· Scott Frost, formerly a writer for Twin Peaks and The X-Files, signs his latest book, Never Fear, at Vroman's in Pasadena.