Have you ever found yourself watching a typically riveting episode of Grey's Anatomy on Sunday night, and in between the prefrontal ice-pick stabs of the cold headache you've developed from pounding half a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk, wondered exactly how star Ellen Pompeo maintains her exquisitely Zellwegerian figure? The answer to what makes the TV physician's white lab coat seem like a tarp thrown over a broom, it seems, is simpler than you ever dreamed. A high-level Defamer operative explains in a series of e-mails Friday night:

Not that you want to hear us bitch about our connectivity issues, but it seems that the blazing heat liquefied anyone wearing a customer service headset over at our fine internet service provider (hint: begins with "A" and ends with "delphia"), leading to unusual call volumes, interminable waits on hold, and our inability to do any work. We're back for now, though, which we're sure makes everyone feel better. Do us a favor and help us make up for our downtime by reloading this page 40 or 50 times over the course of the next hour or so. Thanks.

In a year in which the new Emmy nominations process has robbed the public of promising tabloid cat-fights between various Desperate Housewives by snubbing all of them, we're all going to have to look a little harder to find anything compelling about the run-up to the upcoming awards show. Awards site The Envelope turn to the nominations procedure itself to generate some controversy for Oscar's Paste-Eating Cousin™, but when the quarrel involves the phrase "seemingly arcane rule change" and a discussion of poor adjective choices on the TV Academy's evaluation materials, chances are good the muted uproar won't make anyone forget how fun it would be for Eva Longoria to "accidentally" plant a stiletto in the back of Felicity Huffman's neck as she hunts for an errant contact lens. Welcome to AdjectiveGate:

British tabloid News of the World just happened to be milling about a London park known for being a popular gay cruising spot (hey, even British tabloids have needs), when who should emerge from the bushes at 3 a.m. but a "wild-eyed and trembling" George Michael, who threatened to sue as he quickly peeled off in his car. He was followed soon thereafter by a tubby, 58-year-old man named Norman Kirtland, who was more than willing to describe in full detail their night of anonymous, public passion:

In a refreshingly bold stand against the last-place mediocrity that has plagued his network, NBC's Kevin Reilly promises this season's ratings will be "better" and that "we will not be mired in fourth week after week." Here's to the heady feeling of accomplishment derived from occasionally scrambling into third place! [Variety]
Tina Fey leaves behind the SNL Weekend Update desk to focus on her SNL-based sitcom, 30 Rock. Rachel Dratch joins in the defection, which will mercifully bring an end to the era of Debbie Downer's feline AIDS jokes. [THR]
Pirates 2 takes in another $62 million internationally, with openings in Spain, Germany, Italy, and France—all major centers of pirate interest—still to come. [Variety]
Whether you call them "geeks," "nerds," or "virgin fanboys," the 100,000 Comic-Con attendees once again proved to be voracious, enthusiastic consumers of any preview footage that studios dragged down to San Diego. [THR, Variety]
Lifetime will pay $1.2 million per episode for Grey's Anatomy reruns, hoping that skinny star Ellen Pompeo will slot in nicely with the rest of the network's anorexia-based fare. [Variety]

A recent eBay auction reminds us that it wasn't so long ago that there were no internets with which to conveniently disseminate unsubstantiated rumor and heresay. In this 1989 fax fished out of a dumpster outside David Hockney's Santa Monica studio, a "DIRT ALERT" reports that:

Carthaginian history buff/marble-mouthed action star Vin Diesel, once briefly discouraged by a studio executive's refusal to commit the eleventy billion dollars necessary to realize his epic passion project based on the life of legendary mountain-crossing, Italian-besieging general Hannibal, refuses to abandon his crazy, elephant-chasing dreams. While a Hannibal feature film is still in development (primarily in the form of a stunningly detailed shoebox diorama in the obsessed actor's garage), today's THR reports that Diesel will bring a scaled-down realization of his vision to BET in a "groundbreaking" animated series. Hopefully, the TV project will ultimately satisfy Diesel's need to tell this story, saving him from yet another round of frustrating pitches in which shortsighted suits dismiss his plan to march two hundred animatronic elephants across the Alps in a sneak-attack against a real Italian village.

Dessarae Bradford, the woman who ambushed Colin Farrell on Thursday night's taping of The Tonight Show, has released a statement regarding the incident, and promises further deranged ramblings at a press conference downtown at noon today. As it turns out, Bradford insists she isn't a crazy stalker at all—she simply wanted to ensure Farrell was duly prepped for the court papers her "private pi guy / process server doug" would be delivering a few hours later. (Her insane suit, dismissed once already, claims that Farrell harrassed her with dirty phone calls and text messages, and, worst of all, failed to show up for a sex date, a blatant breach of make-believe contract for which he owes her $4,750.) From a statement released to the media and on her website:

When cutting-edge Hollywood golf fashion hits the links of New England alongside the honkey-fabulous world of pressed plaid chinos, sensibilities will be offended, catty giggles exchanged, and gossip columns notified about the sartorial crimes committed by Semitic semi-famous interlopers from the Wrong Coast. In today's column, NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove airs the grievances of the golfing population of the "understated little beach community of Watch Hill, R.I.," where Endeavor superagent Ari Emanuel enrages the local fashion police while summering with his in-laws:

Enjoy the weekend box office numbers, more refreshing than an unauthorized, naked swim in a neighbor's pool to beat the current hell-on-earth heatwave.

· Nina Jacobson is fired from Disney, and gets the news in the delivery room. She lives on, though, in the Mickey Matrix. 650 lesser cast member executions to come. What a Debbie Downer!
· SuriWatch: A photo may or may not reveal a Katie Holmes-like figure holding a baby-like object. Katie returns from Telluride to the comfort of Barney's, sans Suri. The Queen of Queens claims to have seen/ touched/tasted the child, offers sketchy report.
· The Week in (Possibly) Substance-Related Celebrity Car Accidents: Daniel Baldwin at 80 mph. Haley Joel Osment hits a brick pillar, and is spotted hours before.
· Colin Farrell is paid a visit by a nutcase on The Tonight Show.
· Tom Cruise makes a tender, suck-up gesture towards reconciliation with Steven Spielberg.
· Party reports: Monster House and Miami Vice.
· Joel Siegel vs. Kevin Smith.
· Oprah Winfrey puts to rest all the gay rumors, thus officially starting the golden era of Oprah-Winfrey-is-gay rumors.
· The CW hopes their chosen color of green will lull and soothe viewers into watching their crappy programming.
· On a recent, Malibu poodle-shopping excursion, Paris Hilton coldly rejects Firecrotch's attempts at reaching out.
· America's Next Top Model writers demand their just dues for putting the words "a fashion spread in Elle magazine, shot by world reknowned fashion photographer Gilles Bensimon" in Tyra Banks' mouth every week.
· There's nothing Dakota can't do!
· Can you blame David Rosenthal? Heidi Klum so pretty!
· Everything you're not missing at Hyde.
· Pamela Anderson gigantic fake tits to spill out of wedding dress soon.
· Britney Spears, like, feelin' tigers, y'all!

Shouldering the burden of a fourth-place network's comeback dreams must be a psychically draining undertaking for even the most stable television producer, to say nothing of one who once sought refuge from TV's pressures by curling up with a call girl and a warm, homemade rock of cocaine. At this morning's media session for Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the series NBC hopes will help drag the net from the Nielsen basement to the foot of the stairs that it may one day use to climb out of that basement, the Peacock Messiah may have started to show the effects of that pressure with a Freudian crack, er, slip for the ages. Reports TV Week's blog from the TCAs:

A Defamer operative sends us a party report from the Miami Vice premiere, where Brett Ratner held court in the men's room as a hammered Michelle Rodriguez unsuccessfully tried to talk her way inside, and the secret language of Shaq's handshake rituals was finally revealed.

Friday
· The New Beverly offers an interesting double bill of Thumbsucker and Donnie Darko, in which teens deal with their angst by sucking their thumbs and traveling through time, respectively. [via flavorpill]
· Biz Markie, he of Celebrity Fit Club and "Yoooooou, you got what I neeeeeeeeed" renown, will DJ tonight at Opium. Feel free to tell him he didn't look that fat on TV. Even though he kinda did.
Saturday
· Music round-up: The Giant Village dance music festival downtown has Paul Oakenfold, Deep Dish, John Digweed, and many more DJs to help you better enjoy your hug-drugs; MoCA Nightvisions features the Like; or for a total change of pace, the Rap Bastardz will toss sex toys into the crowd at Cine-Space.
· Book Soup hosts a McSweeney's double feature with the authors of The Secret Language of Sleep : A Couple's Guide to the Thirty-Nine Positions and Baby, Mix Me a Drink trying to keep straight who wrote the sleep book and who wrote the booze book.
· Chicks kicking each other's asses...on skates. Yeah, you know what we're talking about.
Sunday
· Oneida at Spaceland; Mr. Lif at the Knitting Factory; Gnarls Barkley at Avalon; KCRW's World Festival with The Flaming Lips, Thievery Corporation & Os Mutantes at The Hollywood Bowl.
· ASSSSCat is up and running at the UCB Theatre, with usual asssscatters like Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, and Andrew Daly giving away their asssscatty goodies for free.

Our request for photos of the WGA protest outside the America's Next Top Model offices did not go unheeded, as a faithful operative in the area supplied us with this picture of the red army of reality show writers stirring up attention for their attempts to unionize. We're a little disappointed that no one's yet burned Tyra Banks in effigy, for there could hardly be a more potent symbol of coming revolution than Banks' iconic weave aflame, but at least someone tried to deliver the goods on a picket sign. The one featured here is partially obscured, but we think we can extrapolate the catchy slogan "Models Don't Eat—But My Family Needs To" from what's visible. Not bad, but maybe they can borrow a sympathetic Guild sitcom writer for a little punch-up if the strike drags on.

Because we have determined that there are not nearly enough places on the internet to see photographs of fabulous people enjoying fabulous times at our city's most...fabulous...events, we dispatched photographer Amy Rodrigue to kick off our new Defamer PartyWatch feature* by attending Jane magazine's party for its Clothes Off Our Back-benefiting "Naked Issue" at a private residence (read: obscenely large home) in Beverly Hills last night, assuring her she would not be allowed to return to Defamer HQ until she'd captured the image of at least one Hilton. (Mission accomplished, but in an ironic twist, Nicky Hilton's picture did not make the cut for this photoset. You know what she looks like by now.) And because our research further determined that "you people" don't care about words when there are pretty pictures to gawk at, we usher you forward to the gallery of fabulous photographs featured after the fabulous! jump:

The rest of the post and an update after the jump.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers. Send yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the (most recent) time you saw Tyra Banks and Brittany Murphy high-fiving the night away.

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