· Help Bravo populate the audiences for comedy shows featuring Paula Poundstone (tonight), Caroline Rhea (tomorrow), and Joan Rivers (Wednesday) at the Orpheum Theater. We know this is terribly unfair to two of them, but we can't help thinking they're going to call their special The Crones of Comedy. Or for a safer alternative comedy solution, there's the Paul F. Tompkins Show at Largo.
· Monday night music: Architecture in Helsinki at the Troubadour; Esthero at the Roxy; The Icarus Line at the Viper Room.
· You're an expert at something, we know you are. Show up at the The Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC) panel tonight at the Veterans Memorial Building, The Writer as Specialist: Finding Your Niche, and learn how to harness your preferred area of know-it-allness for writing gigs.

As any comic book fan can tell you, behind every superhero is an origin story that explains the genesis of the character's special abilities. This week's Entertainment Weekly dips into X-Men: The Last Stand director Brett "Wolverstein" Ratner's past, revealing how his carefree upbringing and swinging film school days combined to make him the uncanny, hard-partying, hacky mutant that we've come to know and love:

Yesterday's lengthy LAT profile of nice-guy producer Mark Gordon reminded us again of how low the bar for Hollywood sainthood is set; if you can somehow find success in the industry without assembling your underlings each afternoon for a round of brutal beatings with a burlap sack full of unsolicited screenplays and you don't turn up dead underneath a pile of high-priced call girls, get ready for your halo fitting:

Paramount has much riding on Jackass: Number Two, with the hit-hungry studio praying audiences will show up for another heaping serving of its particular brand of inter-rectal Hot Wheels fun. Director Jeff Tremaine—whose face became familiar to West Hollywood locals when Jackass star Johnny Knoxville put it on a billboard promoting a fictional gay cruise line—spoke to MTV.com about his unwitting participation in the viral marketing prank:

· Sony's worldwide day-and-date release strategy for The Da Vinci Code proves incredibly effective, especially in Catholic-heavy countries like Spain and Italy, which set box office records this weekend. As a reward for their patronage, Sony's Amy Pascal has promised those markets special premieres of any future film that blasphemes their savior. [Variety]
· We'd somewhat naively assumed that deleting a show from our TiVo season pass made it disappear from the airwaves, but the huge Nielsens of the Desperate Housewives finale prove otherwise. [THR]
· Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette has already generated buzz in the fashion world. We don't even know what "flouncy pink footwear" is, but apparently it's "in" because of the movie. [Variety]
· A development executive at MTV wakes up from a two-year coma and greenlights a Jennifer Lopez-produced reality series about dancers trying to make it, tragically unaware that no one cares about what Lopez does anymore. [THR]
· After five days at Cannes, no film has emerged as frontrunner for the Palm D'or. Jury members, however, are considering awarding it to the out-of-competition X-Men: The Last Stand if Brett Ratner promises to leave their country a few days early. [Variety]

TMZ.com's video coverage of the Shitfaced Brandon Davis Firecrotch Diatribe continues, as the site has apparently dispatched cameramen to tail the semiprofessional clubgoer wherever he may drunkenly roam. This time, they dutifully record Davis getting an earful of insults from an angry Lindsay Lohan fan:

Not one to be overshadowed by The Da Vinci Code's strong showing at the global box office this weekend, Madonna made sure to remind the world who's boss when it comes to heresy-drenched pop spectacles by mounting herself on a massive, mirror-tiled cross (picture courtesy of Towleroad) at last night's tour kick-off at The Forum. (A venue, interestingly enough, owned by the Faithful Central Bible Church.) A stunned, rapturous crowd of Gays quickly fell silent as her dutiful, Vogueing background dancers drove glowsticks through her palms and into the glittering crucifix with stacks of money. The throng was disappointed, however, when they learned they'd have to wait three days and pay an additional $400 a ticket to see the end of her act, when the dancers will roll away a one-ton sequined boulder, and she will emerge reborn from an onstage tomb at the Staples Center.

As expected, this weekend's world premiere of the The Da Vinci Code was quickly followed by the release of pirated copies of the summer's first true blockbuster. Reuters reports from the somewhat less glamorous black market debut event in Shanghai:

Let the box office numbers be your ray of sunshine on this soggy Monday morning:

· Upfronts 2006: NBC finds its mojo, ABC quickly snuffs it, CBS goes soft, and Fox just wishes Brad Garrett would get off the stage.
· The Da Vinci Code: Ron Howard and friends ride the rails to hellfire, while critics find the movie a snore. If you think you may not like it, however, don't see it. Or see it twice.
· "A sidewalk ate my baby!": Britney's bad week.
· Charlie Sheen still smelling like teen spirit. American Cheerleader magazine, not so much.
· "Honey, if this isn't your urine, and it's not my urine, then whose urine is this?"
· Brett Ratner thinks he's Richard fucking Avedon.
· Brandon Davis: humanitarian. The filth-spewing stats. Paris Hilton's flack claims she used her phone as a "defensive tool," then demonstrates by acting like one.
· The tiff that started it all.
· Superman Returns, tells us he has an important announcement to make after dinner about his roommate Michael.
· Marc Cherry is very concerned about putting products in his show, but he'll do it anyway.
· Exclusive! Celebrities hog free shit!
· Will & Grace goes where old, gay sitcoms go to die.
· Lorenzo Lamas does field research for new role as person who flies coach.

· The votes are in, and America has spoken. And Mischa...it's your time. See you at the reunion show.
· According to Nikki Finke, the early word on Da Vinci Code's box office is: Blasphemelicious!
· The director of The Omen offers a master class in how not to use 9/11 in your movie.
· Not only has TMZ gone and made Britney cry after her near-fumble, they made sure to get some video of it. Warning: You will feel very, very dirty after watching it.

Friday
· Friday night music: Irving at The Echo; Ministry at the House of Blues; Aquabats at the El Rey.
· The Getty offers up actors reading short stories on the theme "Much Ado at Dinner" for its weekend of "short story food fictions," with John Lithow and Rene "Clayton Endicott III" Auberjonois participating in tonight's event.
Saturday
· More music, fewer problems: The Rogers Sisters with I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness at The Echo; the Neighborhood Festival at the Queen Mary has Whirlwind Heat, Moving Units, Ima Robot and, as they say, much, much more.
· Did you know the Hollywood Forever Cemetery movie screenings have already started? Join 10,000 of your best, wine-chugging picnic pals for a showing of Detour among the gaudiest memorials this side of Liberace's coffin.
Sunday
· The End of Hunger benefit concert at CineSpace features folk-soul acts Quincy Coleman, Shane Alexander, and AM, all in the name of halting global warming. We kid, of course.
· And if all that do-gooding isn't enough for you, the Venice Family Clinic sponsors an art walk around Venice and at the Westminster School.

Lionsgate seems to have an iron stomach for brutally graphic, sado-sexual material (Hard Candy's extended castration sequence, the Hostel ball gag torture, virtually any scene in Madea's Family Reunion, etc...), so you'd think their people wouldn't be the least bit uptight about the director of their latest gorefest's XXX past. Not so, says Page Six:

Your hand is shaking either because you're trembling with anticipation over the responses to today's blind item guessing game, or you haven't yet spiked your Friday afternoon latte with enough vodka to get you through to happy hour. We'll do our part to make sure it stops, but first, roll around in One Squat-Ready Vice before going on to your guesses:

Fox entered the upfronts somewhat confidently this year, and, as expected, gathered advertisers responded favorably to their chosen theme, "Idol Swallowed The Olympics: What The Hell Else Do You Need To Know? Now Give Us All Your Money." Still, that doesn't mean there wasn't room for misfires, such as when new Fox sitcom star Brad Garrett decided to try out some improvised, Idol-themed insult comedy:

With news that the much-loved, little-watched Arrested Development might find a second life on Showtime following its Fox cancellation lingering long after the show's series finale, fans really never had a chance to say goodbye. But this weekend, a prop house sale here in L.A. gives them a chance to end the drawn-out grieving process by taking home their own pieces of the Bluth legacy:

A little earlier today, a representative of Lifestyle Media, publisher of American Cheerleader, asked that we remove an image of that magazine's cover that we used to illustrate our post about the actor's latest spirit squad-related troubles, a request with which we happily complied. Of course, this distancing from Sheen during such a turbulent period of negative publicity, while admirably principled, will not be without its costs. We expect that this sudden abandonment will result in the immediate cancellation of Sheen's subscription, and depending on how personally he takes the news, the pulling of all advertising for The Mr. Jonze Talent Agency And Cheerleader Camp For Young Ladies Of Extraordinary Promise from the journal's pages, a revenue loss that could reach five figures.

Hollywood 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 Bruce Willis accidentally tumble into a wormhole and pop out in 1985.

"Are we having a racist moment here?" Those are the words that brought a BBC radio interview to a screeching halt yesterday by Halle Berry, there to promote X-Men: The Last Stand with her co-star, Hugh Jackman. By way of flashback, let's piece back together what led up to it, with the help of the AP:

This whole blog "business" is far too immature for us to rent out a theater somewhere, invite Tom Cruise, Lindsay Lohan, and Les Moonves to do a little song-and-dance about our upcoming content offerings, and then get a club full of potential advertisers greviously drunk, but please know that we would do all of these things in a heartbeat if it were within our means. Instead, we briefly thank this week's sponsors and invite others to see this page for exciting ways new ones can fork over their online advertising dollars and assist us with our smaller-scale consumption of alcohol.