Friday
· Illustrator Martin Cendreda of South Park, Zurik Robot and Dang! mini-comics fame, will be opening his art show at the comic book geek haven Secret Headquarters. [via lafreebie]
· It's Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors at the Hilton Burbank Airport and Convention Center. But you knew that already, didn't you, Chainsaw?
Saturday
· Saturday night music: The Boy Least Likely To at the Roxy; The Liars at the Troubadour; Arctic Monkeys at the Wiltern. And Madonna's at the Staples Center, but how many times are you gonna watch her crucify herself on one tour?
· At the risk of angering the anti-UCB comedy establishment, we note that Mary Lynn Rajskub, 24's irresistibly petulant hacker, will be guest monologuing at ASSSSCAT.
Sunday
· In case you didn't get sufficiently re-devirginized at the assistant prom a couple of weeks ago, there's another chance to get lucky at Prom Night 1986: "Time After Time" at Saints and Sinners.
· Caryn Coleman, editor of the great art.blogging.la, offers a workshop for kids about how to blog at the Hammer Museum. We will be as shocked as anyone to discover that there is an application of blogging beyond the reporting of nipple slips.

Brett Ratner's runaway, Spielberg-humbling success is not only useful for impressing famous chicks, it also causes lesser denizens of his Hollywood kingdom to swoon in his presence. Reports an operative:

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 time you saw Al Pacino and family skipping merrily along The Grove's trolley tracks.

The suspicious birth of Suri Cruise was met with a local outbreak of the bubonic plague, so we can't say we're all that surprised that another monumental celebrity infant arrival was met with a fresh wave of pestilence. The death toll should stop at three, however, as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie rush to the outbreak site, knowing that exposure to the Chosen One will immediately cure those afflicted with the mystery disease.

In a bold and potentially reckless attempt to expand the early buzz surrounding Snakes on Plane from the internet into the real world, New Line is releasing actual snakes onto actual planes in transit between crucial test markets:

Who of us did not find ourselves getting lost in the melodrama of the "Gay Vito" Spatafore plotline on The Sopranos this season? After dieting his way down several velour tracksuit sizes, Vito followed his heart and found johnny cake-flipping love, only to lose it all in one of the show's all-time ugliest whackings. Joseph R. Gannascoli, the straight actor who brought Gay Vito to life, has made no secret of his shady, pharmaceutical-hustling past, but his more recent, legitimate pill-pushing dealings are now the source of a lawsuit:

Join us in recognizing our love for this week's sponsors, with whom we would happily retreat to a povery-stricken African nation in hopes of shielding the birth of our love child from the world's harsh glare. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and marinate in the same kind of passion, see this page.

· In describing whom her studio hopes to draw to The Break-Up's opening weekend, Universal distribution executive Nikki Rocco inadvertently confirms our suspicion that there is no such thing as "a Jennifer Aniston movie fan": "I would hope we could get the Vince Vaughn fans as well as the romantic comedy audience." [Variety]
· Winona Ryder reunites with Heathers writer Daniel Waters for his Sex and Death 101, news that just made us fondly remember how important the phrase "fuck me gently with a chainsaw" was to our teenage life. [THR]
· This information means nothing to us, but we pass it along anyone because somebody probably finds it important: Don Ienner and Michele Anthony leave posts as heads of Sony Music, bringing to an end the reign of the "longest running management partnership in music." [Variety]
· Katie Couric boldly predicts an end to the "pretentious era" in the network evening news, which she will usher out by conducting her entire CBS Nightly News broadcast dressed in a bathrobe and reclining on a sofa. [THR]
· Casey Affleck does his best to keep his big brother working in Hollywood, throwing Ben his animated family film script Aardvark Art's Ark to executive produce. [Variety]

Defamer is committed to bringing together ambitious, young go-getters comfortable with the idea of trading sexual favors for advancement in the entertainment industry with anonymous, Craigslist-trolling executives too cheap to hire out a pro for a lunchtime blowjob. Prepare to fulfill all of your Tinseltown dreams:

Fridays are supposed to be happy days, so it brings us no joy to inform you of the snuffing of yet another incandescent point of celebrity love light: Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz have "decided to take time off as a couple," according to People.

Today's LAT delves into the marketing dilemma that Warner Bros. faces in selling its possibly homosexual box office hero to America: Should they hop on their generously muscled, spandex-clad Superman's shoulders and parade through Boys Town, or would it be wiser to book Brandon Routh on TRL to make out with Jessica Alba? Reports the Times:

Michael Moore's Palm d'Or-winning indictment of the Bush administration, Fahrenheit 9/11, is still a source of controversy two years after its release. Sgt. Peter Damon, a mechanic who lost his arms in a freak accident repairing a Blackhawk helicopter, is suing multiple parties including Moore and NBC (to whom he gave the interview) for $175 million for misrepresenting his position on the war:

Brett Ratner, newly crowned King of Hollywood, has mixed feelings about yanking idol Steven Spielberg from his box office throne and defenestrating him from the nearest palace window. Ratner "gamely attempted humility" about X-Men: The Last Stand's success in a chat with NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove, but we think you already know how his stab at sounding humble turned out:

· Rachel Weisz and Darren Aronofsky succumb to the celebrity childbirth pandemic, welcoming a baby boy into the world last night. It must be so nice for a famous person not to have to worry that people think she was faking her pregnancy or that the baby wasn't actually fathered by her fiancé.
· Meanwhile, Maddox Jolie has already started being cruel to his new little sister. For shame, Maddy. Mommy and Braddy don't love you any less just because you're adopted.
· The always-reliable British tabloid press claims that Brad Pitt has tired of lion-watching in Namibia: "They are cooped up in the hotel, the food isn't great and he doesn't like the heat. He seems thoroughly depressed and I think he misses Malibu."
· There is something in Star Jones' bathroom nearly as frightening as the actual, naked Star Jones running a bath.

[Ed.note—Update after the jump.] Some intial attempts at answering our earlier question about why Sen. Barack Obama might have been at CAA yesterday:

There was a tense moment at the National Spelling Bee earlier today when a precocious contestant repeatedly challenged her misspelling of "paparazzo" by referring to ample evidence of an alternate, colloquial spelling of P-A-V-A-R-O-T-T-I in the canon of Kevin Federline. Eventually, the judge relented and allowed the girl to continue in the competition, muttering something about "the total defilement of everything we hold dear."

Sony's Amy Pascal might be publicly banking on the involvement of starting Da Vinici Code Blasphemy Dream Team backcourt Ron Howard and Tom Hanks in her studio's planned sequel, Angels & Demons, but NPR's Kim Masters reports that should Hanks' schedule interfere, the franchise could still survive:

· First day of June music round-up: Future Seagal-rocker Jared Leto's 30 Seconds to Mars at Avalon; Go-Go and former Surreal Life cast member Jane Weidlin at the Viper Room; Kool Keith at The Vault 350 in Long Beach.
· You may be as surprised as we were to discover that the Danish have their own film festival here in L.A., but they do, starting tonight at the Aero Theatre. Be forewarned: Americaphobic directing legend Lars von Trier might not make it over to take in the latest Dogme 95 offering.
· Authors Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack read from their "solid, thoughtful chick lit" offering, Literacy and Longing in L.A., at Dutton's Brentwood.

As we briefly noted in yesterday's To Do list, former action star and current energy drink magnate Steven Seagal and backing band Thunderbox played The El Rey last night. We imagine the crowd (no, we didn't attend, but don't the photos tell the whole story?) was enraptured by Seagal's blistering—yet searingly bluesy—renditions of his modern classics, "Even Harder To Kill," "Still Above The Law," and "Rocked for Death."* At the very least, the purple-kimonoed (tunicked?) Seagal surely redefined the term "guitar face" for a new generation of fans of the exploding fading-actor-side-project musical genre.

Every so often, we at Defamer offer our help in solving the mysteries that occasionally intersect with our readers' lives in the entertainment industry. Asks a curious operative: