At left, crucial grammatical and spelling errors cause five young Scientologists to fail their final exam in OT-VII Celebrity Support, earning them countless punitive hours relearning their study tech. At right, well, we have no fucking idea what's going on there, but we are nonetheless terrified.

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 a prison-hardened Michelle Rodriguez begin her reassimilation into society by inadvertently mooning LAX.

Time again for our Friday exultation of this week's sponsors, the finest group of companies, products, and/or services we've ever had the unparalleled pleasure of bullet-pointing below our thankful blurb. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and receive a similarly hyperbolic kiss-up, see this page.

· In a move that surprised absolutely no one, NBC picked up Aaron Sorkin's behind-the-scenes-at-SNL pilot Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. leaving the network to decide whether or not there's also room on its schedule for Tina Fey's still untitled behind-the-scenes-at-SNL pilot. [Variety]
· Columbia buys an Ashton Kutcher pitch for a "modern-day Shampoo," but with florists instead of hairdressers, Kutcher instead of Warren Beatty, and brain-dead teenagers instead of the movie's original target audience. [THR]
· CBS helpfully subtracts themselves from our summer viewing plans by unveiling a line-up of "docusoap" Tuesday Night Book Club, Ricki Lake's Game Show Marathon, and the return of Big Brother and Rock Star. [Variety]
· CBS unveils its broadband channel, Innertube, with slate of "original, low-cost" (read: very low cost) shows. We expect one of the channel's initial offerings, Webcam Pointing at Les Moonves' Parked Car So That Fucking Valet Won't Scratch It Again, to be its first breakout hit. [THR]
· Oxygen's announcement of the "largest development slate in its history" leads us to believe that the network still exists. Further research is necessary. Developing... [Variety]

Teri Hatcher is determined to make her "I Was Molested!" media blitz book tour the most fun you'll ever have hearing about sexual abuse. She can swing the mood from haunted to hilarious to horny, sometimes within a single, run-on thought. Take for example her recent "everything goes" interview with Access Hollywood's Nancy O'Dell, where the painful subject of her molestation almost instantly clicks into an icky, in-depth discussion about her favorite body part:

Tom Cruise uses the occasion of last night's M:i:III fan screening at the Chinese Theatre to unveil a post-Miracle Baby Katie Holmes, who's spent a nearly invisible three post-partum weeks heroically putting on the the weight she couldn't seem to gain during her fake pregnancy. Better late than never! [Photo: Getty Images]
· In case you haven't seen this yet, Cruise dropped by BET yesterday to demonstrate his estimable dancing skills with a move perhaps best described as the Rhythmless Honky Riding a Motorcycle. [YouTube]
· Cruise describes why he took a tricked-out sports-car to Harlem: "Absolutely! I was going to Harlem, man! You've got to bring it to go to Harlem! You know what I'm sayin'? You can't just show up in Harlem. You've got to go!" He then attempted to execute an embarrassingly elaborate handshake with co-star Ving Rhames, who grudgingly played along as Cruise's fingers became hopelessly tangled in his own. [NY Daily News]
· Hey, what happened to that airplane banner prank that was supposed to fly above the Chinese last night? "Fog" sounds a lot like a "visit from the Scientology Aviation Administration." [HailXenu.net]

Many saw similarities between American Idol's most recent contestant evictee, 17-year-old Paris Bennett, and the show's previous winner, Fantasia, but what really set the two cartoon-voiced, soulful songbirds apart was backstory. For while Paris was merely a nice kid from a good family (read: bo-ring), Fantasia's life unfolded like a charmed, inner-city fable: Unwed, teenage mother comes from dead-end poverty street (and, it later comes out, hides illiteracy) to win America's ultimate popularity contest. Just when you thought Fantasia's life couldn't be any more charmed, however, there's more: THR reports that she will star as herself in a Lifetime biopic.

• David Spade Dragged Into Sheen-Richards Crap-Flinging [Defamer]

A tipster dropped us this note about the mood at Warner Independent Pictures following the abrupt ouster of president Mark Gill:

Hollywood is understandably nervous about the coming summer movie season, with several massively budgeted, iffy propositions set to establish their shepherds as either the prophetic sons of God they are, or banish them to the sixth rung of outcast-executive Hell with a bullshit production deal. With profits down, and major players advocating salary caps for stars, Entertainment Weekly thought it seemed like the right time to reexamine the asking prices of some the world's biggest movie stars:

· Music round-up: Secret Machines at the El Rey; Run Run Run and Gram Rabbit at the Viper Room; Richard Buckner at Largo; Daniel Johnston does an in-store at Amoeba in Hollywood followed by a show at Spaceland.
· Architect Barabara Bestor, author of Bohemian Modern: Living in Silver Lake, explains what about the BoMo style attracts droves of hipsters to the eastside at Skylight Books.
· We're confident that you'll be just as shocked as we were to discover that Dustin Hoffman had quite the little acting career before Meet the Fockers, as the New Beverly Theater double-features The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy.

A Defamer operative shares this run-in last night with Wayne Brady, when the actor seemed to want to avoid the onset of Chappelle's Syndrome, the crippling affliction in which a comedian's hundred-thousandth intoning of their wildly popular catch-phrase induces a dissociative fugue state that drives them away from millions of dollars in network cash. Says our reader about his Brady encounter:

Something about Uma Thurman—maybe it's in her shimmering laugh, her translucent eyes, or her ability to karate chop her way out of her own grave—has made her an enduring it-muse the world over. The director of Cannes, for example, dubbed her Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters, an ostentatious pretense that cleverly allowed him to get his film festival-curating paws in the vicinity of her Uma-goodies during the medal ceremony. Now, a Russian rock band who found massive success after naming themselves for the actress are putting word out that they want to meet Thurman on their first US tour:

· A video game version of The Sopranos is going forward with much of the show's cast, and with David Chase co-writing a story about Big Pussy's bastard son fighting with Philly mob. However, to get to the action, gamers will have to sit through an unskippable two-hour sequence involving Tony's strange dream about an unconsummated hunt for a cheesesteak. [Variety]
· Catherine Zeta-Jones in negotiations to play Harry Houdini's "exotic" psychic (will she ever escape such pernicious typecasting?) love interest in the in the biopic Death Defying Acts. [THR]
· CW head Dawn Ostroff will gather her lieutenants today in a secret bunker underneath the Warners Bros. lot, where they will decide which select few programs will be doomed to the obscurity of their new network's schedule. [Variety]
· Benicio Del Toro, Michelle Williams, Forest Whitaker, and Catherine O'Hara have all been recruited to provide voices in Spike Jonze's adapation of Where the Wild Things Are. [THR]
· Fox continues to bludgeon mercilessly all comers with American Idol, but last night upped the Nielsen brutality with the second part of a two-hour House special. [Variety]

We think we finally have some clue as to why Ryan Seacrest closes every Tuesday night episode of American Idol with a hearty endorsement for the Fox reality series immediately following it, Unan1mous. reality blurred notes that one of the show's "contestants" (we use scare quotes because of rampant rumors that everyone is planted except for sad sack bear pin-up boy Steve), "self-described womanizer" Jonathan, is featured [pictures VERY NSFW] getting frisky with an SUV on a gay porn site. We imagine life must become that much harder for an old fashioned, God-fearin' womanizer to go about his womanizing duties once the world has seen you doing the proctologist's spread over a driver's seat. For that reason alone, we think Jonathan should get the million dollars, or whatever the hell it is they're arguing about in that bunker.

· What made J.J. Abrams want to direct M:i:III? Simple—a fear that Tom Cruise would murder him in cold blood if he refused: "He asked me, 'You in?' 'I'm in,' I said - because if I'd said, 'No' again, he might kill me." [NY Daily News]
· On Tuesday, Cruise will jet in to Aberdeen, Washington to attend a private M:i:III screening with a local man who won a contest. But the lucky guy is apprehensive about how to relate to the star: "He's in such a different world, I don't even know how to talk to him. I know he's a normal guy, but I don't know what to say to him." A suggestion—don't open with, "I can't wait to tell my psychiatrist that I really got to meet you!" [Seattle Times]
· M:i:III co-star Ving Rhames brags about his "natural chemistry" with Cruise; expect an announcement about their engagement in three months, and another about the new couple's unexpected pregnancy soon after that. [BlackFilm.com]
· Tom on a fire truck! Tom on a fire truck! (Three more laps around Manhattan and he gets to pose in the calendar.) [BWE.tv]
· A blogger stalked Cruise throughout his city-spanning escapade yesterday, snapped a bunch of pictures, and lived to tell about it. [Confessions of a Celebrity Stalker and the Wonders of NYC]
· Jossip went to TRL to see Tom and all they got was this lousy Scientology flier for a Dianetics movie. [Jossip]

The procreative drama unfolding within the proscenium arches of Britney Spears' uteral walls has kept much of the world guessing with giddy anticipation: Is the celebrity baby-dropper indeed with child, or merely experiencing some extended Twinkie-bulge? Would she, as IMDB notes, be making a definitive announcement on the contents of her belly today? And to further complicate nursery matter, In Touch Weekly, the world's most trusted authority on fishy-smelling Britney Spears stories, is reporting that Spears has painted a room in her mansion pink, and has added a new, full-time babysitter to the payroll. This one, however, is for her husband:

Back in November, New Line teased us by whispering in our ear the tantalizing news that it had secured the services of the entire Rush Hour team for the franchise's third installment, providing celebrated fauxteur Brett Ratner with all the tools necessary to fully exploit his hacky gifts. (For example, had Tucker not signed on, Ratner would've been forced to replace him with a stand-in pinching the air out of a balloon, a crude substitute for the actor's trademark high-pitched whine that would've severely hamstrung his cinematic vision.) With the director's support system all in place, Variety reports that New Line has finally greenlighted the Paris-set pic, which will start production late this summer for a release in the summer of 2007. We know that movie magic takes time to properly conjure, but a year seems like an unspeakably cruel amount of time to have to wait to see Tucker and Jackie Chan engaged in a hilarious, language-barrier-hampered argument with a stereotypically rude French waiter, in which none of three agitated parties has any idea why a Chinese gang has decided to terrorize the French capital.

Yesterday, we noted the rather rude press release from Warner Independent Pictures sending off president Mark Gill into the exile of a production deal, and suggested an idea for a more fitting goodbye involving a stuffed penguin, a letter opener, and a succinct note about the personnel change. For reasons we will never understand, an operative was inspired to create the above mock-up of what that announcement might actually look like; we encourage anyone affected by the news of Gill's abrupt departure to clip and save the adorable little heart-stabbed guy as a reminder of the sad news.