· CBS is expected to announce a schedule tomorrow that "emphasizes stability and consistency" to contrast with the "pants-wetting desperation moves" made earlier this week by "the pussies" at NBC and ABC. [Variety]
· Following in the footsteps of directing giants George Lucas and Peter Jackson, the curiously hacky Michael Bay acquires the effects studio Digital Domain, which he will charge with the task of creating cinema's most realistic somersaulting, exploding exotic sports cars. [THR]
· The two-hour season finale Grey's Anatomy scored big without a Desperate Housewives lead-in, perhaps foreshadowing what the show might do when unleashed on Thursday nights this fall. [Variety]
· News Corp. will sell episodes of 24 on MySpace, part of a larger strategy to use the site to take on Yahoo and iTunes. So beware: When "Beheaded Terrorist Who Refused To Tell Jack The Location Of The Dirty Bomb" asks to be one of your friends, he's just trying to make you buy something. [THR/Reuters]
· Though the WGA's contract doesn't expire for over a year, studios are already starting to talk strike preparation in the trades, prompting the Guild to decry the rhetoric retaliating for their own "saber-rattling" in the media. Can't everyone just walk out now and get this over with? [Variety]

In a judicious show of restraint on behalf of CNN Law Center's editors, the word "gay" was removed at the last moment from between the words "naked" and "guy," relieving their headline of any unpleasant undercurrents of insensitivity, cultural or otherwise.

ABC's deliberate strategy of slowing feeding bored, disenchanted Desperate Housewives viewers to the infant Grey's Anatomy monster has finally come to fruition, as the Nielsen beast is now fully grown and ready to be sent out to wreak havoc on the network's competition. At a press conference this morning, ABC announced that it's moving Grey's to 9 p.m. on Thursday, where it will compete with CBS's CSI and, in a realization of NBC president Kevin Reilly's most career-chilling fears, the fledgling Aaron Sorkin drama Studio 60. Reports Var:

Both the NY Daily News and the NY Post feature photos on their front pages of successfully deprogrammed ex-Kabbalah devotee Britney Spears driving her pristine, soft-top Mini Cooper with her slightly damaged, soft-top mini-human, Sean Preston, improperly harnessed into his child safety seat facing forward, instead of the recommended backward. (Call us bleeding hearts, we were just thrilled he wasn't bungee'd to a snowboard rack.) Both tabloids lazily grabbed at the most obvious headline, running with a redundant "Oops, I Did It Again"-motif. We can only hope "Dropped My Baby (One More Time)" won't too echo across the nation's newsstands the morning after Spears' next infant-fracturing high-chair malfunction.

Hoping to postpone Vatican-ordered multiplex burnings and mass excommunications until after The Da Vinci Code has raked in its opening weekend millions, Sony has eschewed the practice of pre-screening their inevitable blockbuster for influencers, choosing to give up any advance buzz based on the actual product until a critics' showing tonight and Wednesday's premiere at Cannes. But Sony and the producers at Imagine didn't always agree on this strategy, according to to the NY Times' Sharon Waxman:

In today's column, Rush & Molloy celebrate infamously quirky, taut-faced producer Brian Grazer's taste for pranks. While Grazer's trademark trick of surreptitiously inserting a framed picture of himself into his hosts' photo collections is well-documented, we'd never heard of this exciting twist on the Graz'd formula:

· Let it be known that despite rampant internet reports to the contrary, future Defamer war bride and American Idol contestant Katherine McPhee is not a Scientologist, just another lost soul who was trying to sleep with one.
· If the genius Panopticist spends this much time figuring out what's wrong with the clock on 24, you can be damn sure we're gonna read every obsessive word about it.
· This must be the revenge for all those kittens killed by God to punish the world's masturbators. That ceiling feline is going to wind up on Stuff On My Cat any day now, and it ain't gonna be pretty.
· And if you're too classy to kill a kitten to your favorite celebrity, there are safer options with which you can fill that particular need.
· "Ugh, though — The Black Donnellys. OK, the Crash guy is behind it, and it's got that Irishy mournful Mystic River spirit to it. People think it's TV gold. But Crash was trite and preachy. Aha—and so is this." So bloggeth the NY Times' Virginia Heffernan to a chorus of amens from our section of the congregation.

Jodie Foster took some time off from her busy schedule of shooting whatever claustrophobic action/suspense thriller she happens to be working on at the moment to deliver the commencement address to the graduating class of University of Pennsylvania. Reviews have been good, with Foster reportedly having struck the perfect balance of irreverence and gravitas. For the requisite final note of productive optimism, however, Foster turned to the unlikely inspiration of an Eminem lyric. It was a bold move to choose the controversial rapper's song "Lose Yourself" from which to quote, though perhaps not as incendiary as it would have been had she chosen one of his less "up with people" sentiments, such as "Kill You"'s "Slut, you think I won't choke no whore/'till the vocal cords don't work in her throat no more?!"

NBC president Kevin Reilly's admission of scheduling fear at the upfronts seems to have opened the door for his own employees to take some pokes at him. Blogs the LAT:

The suffix "whore" has been appended to so many of Paris Hilton's various pursuits—fame-, man-, label-, what have you—that it's easy to lose sight of the fact that first and foremost, Hilton is a whore to her dutiful love of her own family. Take for instance her selfless gesture for mom Kathy this Mother's Day: While most of us managed a mere phone call or hastily ordered bouquet, Paris, working completely independently save for a minor contribution by her staff of assistants, personal shoppers and doting boutique personnel, managed to put together a gift bag of Christian Dior products to be delivered to her mom as a special, "I love you $10,000's worth of oversized sunglasses!" surprise. But as TMZ reports, this sweet gesture of filial devotion would be foiled by a heartless, lurking menace:

· Monday night music: The Bronx and Wires on Fire at Spaceland; The Goo Goo Dolls at the Troubadour; and Kiefer Sutherland stalkers are likely to meet the object of their obsession at the Rocco DeLuca show (the band The Kief tackles Christmas trees with) at the Viper Room.
· AFI's Directing Workshop for Women shows off the handiwork of its budding female helmers at the Harmony Gold Theatre. For free, if you RSVP.
· Sarah Silverman shows off her mouth/anus/vagina three-part harmonies while Patton Oswalt secretly envies the genitalia required to pull off such a feat at Largo.

NBC might be inspiring poetry in some of its underlings, but at the top of the executive food chain, there still seems to be a touch of post-traumatic stress disorder following their cellar-dwelling season. At NBC's upfront presentation earlier today, president Kevin Reilly explained how too many shakedowns for his Nielsen milk money by the other network bullies informed his decision to go with just two sitcoms on their traditionally comedy-heavy Thursday night. Reports the LAT:

Defamer is committed to bringing together qualified, discreet professionals from the private aviation industry and the frequent-flying superproducers who wouldn't mind having a little something-something to look at while sipping martinis on the flight to Cannes, OK? Via monster.com, an exciting opportunity for anyone looking to spend some quality, pressurized-cabin time with a Hollywood power player:

The promise of the wiping clean of the Nielsen slate accompanying the announcement of their fall schedule seems to have raised morale over at fourth-place NBC, as the network's new programming inspired one anonymous staffer to burst into verse and share his or her infectious enthusiasm with co-workers via e-mail. Who needs to pin their hopes to the mercurial Aaron Sorkin when fresh voices like this are waiting to lead a Peacock renaissance?

Us Weekly's blog points us to a brief, cryptic pronouncement buried deep in the "Love B: stream of consciousness" section of Britney Spears' official website. (Like a windswept tumbleweed rolling through the ghost town of her mind, it's the first such update in almost a year.) In a ten-word statement annulling everything we thought we held true about Spear's unwavering commitment to fake spirituality, the butterfingered fertility goddess has renounced her allegiance to that most sacrosanct of Judaism-sprinkled celebrity sects, Kabbalah.

· NBC still hasn't recovered from the pain of Joey and Four Kings, plays it safe on the comedy front by only picking up two new sitcoms for its fall schedule, the aforementioned 30 Rock and the John Lithgow/Jeffrey Tambor old-guys-who-fight-death-with-laughter vehicle 20 Years, both grouped in a new Wednesday night block. [Variety]
· ABC gives series orders to six more projects. Dramas: Brothers and Sisters, Ugly Betty, Traveler, and Anne Heche/Northern Exposure mash-up Men in Trees. On the comedy side: Big Day and the untitled Burnett/Beckerman heist comedy in which Grounded for Life's Donal Logue and his pals try to rob Mick Jagger. [THR]
· Americans might find him creepy and off-putting, but foreigners can't get enough of Tom Cruise as M:i:III wins the foreign box office for the second straight week with $40.5 million. [Variety]
· The CW can't bring itself to damn 7th Heaven to the TV afterlife, resurrecting the seemingly dead 7th Heaven for their inaugural season. [THR]
· CBS orders four new dramas and two comedies, and also picks up 13 episodes of fat, clueless husband/hot, skinny wife staple King of Queens and second seasons for The New Adventures of Old Christine and Close to Home. [Variety]

Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria continues to be the subject of an ongoing campaign by Maxim magazine to beatify the pint-sized Latina firecracker with the title of Her Babemost Excellency, Supreme Exalted Hottie Above All Others. Not satisfied merely to celebrate their 100th issue by coating the Nevada desert in her Godzilla-sized likeness, Longoria now crowns the magazine's annual "Hot 100" list for the second year in a row:

Shortly, NBC will be the first network to announce its fall schedule at this week's "upfront" presentations to advertisers in NY, when it is widely expected that the network will formally anoint Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and the new, highly buzzed-about drama Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip Live From A Soundstage In Los Angeles, California, as the Peacock Messiah. But don't think that the folks at NBC didn't perform their due diligence (Executive: "So, Aaron, um...yeah...how are, you know, things?" Sorkin: "I'm not making my own crack anymore." Exec: "Welcome to the NBC family.") before putting their fate in the hands of the famously troubled showrunner. Reports the WSJ:

Disclosure: As charter members of the vast media conspiracy bent on portraying international superstar Tom Cruise in a negative light, all figures from the weekend box office numbers may be presented in a way that unfairly advances our dark agenda. Proceed with caution.

· Despite a valiant showing from his biggest supporters, M:i:III disappoints™.
· Paramount, meanwhile, doesn't take the news too well. Relax, guys. World Trade Center will wipe its ass with United 93!
· In other thrilling disappointment news, David Blaine completely and utterly fails at breaking the breath-holding record. Or making us care.
· Pine-diving with Kiefer.
· Something happens to someone on American Idol.
· Lindsay Lohan's morning-after twitch becomes a recurring marketing motif.
· Britney Spears new perfume is called "In Control." You know, just like her life.
· Charlie Sheen is a 100% hooker-dressed-up-as-cheerleader-loving, red-blooded American male!
· Chad Lowe spends allowance on frothy, caffeinated beverage.
· Oprah and the cast of Will & Grace see eye to eye on the joy of shitting. Hallelujah!
· Your kids are doing it. Isn't it time you talked to them about Donkey Punching?
· Paris Hilton adds a little skank-magic to E3.