· Who knew that Garrison Keillor was such a big bully? Representatives for his Prarie Home Companion empire have gone all cease-and-desist on the MNspeak blog over a parody t-shirt.
· Fun With Plea-Bargaining: The guy who threatened to kidnap Letterman's baby and nanny gets 10 years in jail—but for embezzlement, obstruction, and illegally possessing wildlife, not attempted kidnapping.
· "Rampant cocaine use" and "vague intimations of 'debaucheries'" make local visual effects houses sounds like more fun than a key party in the Hills.
· Dave Chappelle finds returning to stand-up much less terrifying than another season of Chappelle's Show.
· Always about three times less controversial than onetime Siamese twin Ben Affleck, Matt Damon quietly gets engaged to his noncelebrity girlfriend of two years.
· If you liked Stuff On My Cat, then you'll love Cats in Sinks.

· A Decidedly Above-Average Music Round-up: Royksopp at Avalon; Son Volt and Earlimart at the El Rey; the Decemberists play the first of two nights at the Henry Fonda.
· Laughter Vs. Brain Tumors: The Friars Club hosts a night of stand-up comedy to raise money for cancer research at The Brain Tumor Center at Duke University.
· Author Eddi Fiegel signs Dream a Little Dream: The Life of Cass Elliott at Book Soup. Actually, the event's at Jaxx, next door to Book Soup, where there will be booze, music, and a definitive explanation that Mama Cass did not, in fact, tragically choke to death on a sandwich "of any sort."

Reality Blurred recaps last night's shit-tastic Kill Reality finale, and if the rest of the show was anything like the last episode (even with our healthy appetite for trainwreck TV, we couldn't even bring ourselves to TiVo recycled reality show contestants), we're all probably better off that it's quietly slipping off E!. Don't even try to discern any context from the following passage, which works just as well as vignettes:

Seeking to climb out of HBO's shadow and tired of his pay-cable domain being perceived as The L Word and Queer As Folk network, president Robert Greenblatt finally takes a concrete step to symbolically cement Showtime's hetero credibility by openly making out with Liza Minelli.

With no movies to promote, things have been exceedingly quiet on the Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson front. While some might mistakenly interpret this silence to mean that actors cease to exist in the absence of publicity obligations, many of them continue to live and shop among us in the greater Los Angeles area. A reader spots the Stallion on the loose and unshod in Venice, giving us all a chance to check in with him:

Heathers suicide hopeful Martha Dumptruck or manchild MTV star Andy Milonakis? You make the call. Take the whole quiz over at You Can't Make It Up.

We fear that the demands of the fall TV season, with its unforgiving schedule of constant show launches, might have finally taxed the promotional geniuses behind the Fox News Cafe's legendary themed menus to their breaking point. How else to explain today's bill of fare at the cafeteria, celebrating tonight's premiere of forensic anthropology procedural drama Bones? If ever there was a time to take a pass on getting cute at the deli counter and salad bar, this was it. Today's menu is jam-packed with macabre offerings certain to kill Fox employees' appetites in cold blood. The "Cadaverous Combo" couldn't sound more delish if it were served buffet-style from a coroner's cold slab. If that's not setting off your Pavlovian salivating response, how about the "Skeleton Sandwiches Featuring Premium Boar's Head Meats," which evoke ghouls gnawing at the last pieces of decaying flesh stubbornly clinging to the bone? Not so much? Then surely you'll want to slurp up the "DNA Daily Soup," which we pray in the name of all that is good and holy isn't from the cream family today. In a word: Yum.

· In addition to the seemingly endless (but helpful) parade of telethons and corporate matching gift programs for hurricane relief, Hollywood is getting "creative" in its charitable efforts to ease people's pain, such as building and/or refurbishing a variety of structures to house the displaced. The entertainment industry: not always as evil as it's cracked up to be. [Variety]
· Emma Roberts, daughter-of-Eric-and-niece-of-Julia, kicks off in earnest a life of explaining that her acting career has nothing to do with her bloodlines by being cast as the big-screen Nancy Drew. Potentially making matters worse is that Nancy Drew: The Mystery in Hollywood Hills will be set in the "fast-living, self-indulgent world of Hollywood." [THR]
· HBO picks up Rome for a second 12 episode season, but in true HBO fashion, the series won't air again until 2007. That's a long time until we get to see Polly Walker getting freaky two or three times an episode. But we'll wait. [Variety]
· Fox Searchlight picks up Bart "Mr. Julianne Moore" Freundlich's Trust the Man for $6 to $7 million at Toronto, seemingly without being threatened with "handshake court" by Paramount Classics. [THR]
· Universal and Mountain Dew Films will partner on the snowboarding documentary First Descent. Someone please burn down Hollywood before Paramount hooks up with Fanta. [Variety]

Now that Angelina Jolie has saved newly adopted daughter Zahara from a life of poverty and starvation in Ethiopia, it's time to start instilling Hollywood's notion of a healthy body image in the little bundle of joy:

Unlike most avowedly straight actors who have been rumored to be gay, former Hobbitses Elijah Wood doesn't freak the hell out and call his lawyers. Instead, he throws back his head and laughs and laughs:

Here's the short, possibly oversimplified version: After Paramount Classics agreed to a "handshake deal" to buy Thank You for Smoking at the Toronto film festival, the movie's producer, a dot-com billionaire allegedly ignorant of The Way Things Are Done in Hollywood, then turned around and made an "actual deal" to sell it to Fox Searchlight. Paramount Classics, it should be noted, is less than pleased with this outcome, and wackiness ensues. Sayeth the LAT:

It seems that Michael Jackson's plans to recreate the Neverland experience in far-flung Dubai are nearly complete. From Page Six:

· We know that you've all been terribly worried, but power has been restored at Defamer HQ. Enjoy this special Needless Exclamation Edition of Short Ends.
· Roy Horn walks!
· Martha Stewart talks!
· Britney Spears stinks! via [Adrants]
· Gay cowboy flees Los Feliz!
· Tina Fey reproduces!

From what we can gather from various news stories, Defamer HQ is one of the last places still without power in the aftermath of the blackout. As we stood on the sidewalk, wondering why the traffic lights on the end of the street seemed to be fully operational while the beer in our refrigerator was in peril of going skunky, a miracle transpired: Kicking up to the front of our building on a commandeered Razor scooter was noted rescue specialist Sean Penn. There was little room left on his conveyance of mercy with the actor, a Rolling Stone journalist, and a wire service photographer crammed on board, but we climbed onto his broad shoulders, and he selflessly ferried us to the provisional HQ where we now sit. (He finds that picture of Elijah Wood just as off-putting as you do, by the way.)

Yes, the power's out across Los Angeles (what, only one Drudge siren?). While you wait for Defamer HQ to return to the grid, enjoy the above photo of Elijah Wood at a parade in New York City this past weekend, courtesy of our friends at Cityrag.

Sure, we've lost hours quietly pouring over the Tropicana Bar's proprieter/celebrity hottness calibration technician Amanda Scheer Demme's 600-word "mini-biography" on IMDb, but no matter how many times we've silently savored the words "Lifestyle Producer," we've always been left wishing that we knew more about the woman behind the Trop's iron rope. Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle fed us 1,900 more words on nightlife's most fascinating personality; of those nearly two thousand bits of Demme-related wisdom,, at least twenty-nine were dedicated to letting us know about her criminally overlooked "soft side":

While Donald Trump bragged giddily to the NY Times that his hand-picked new Apprentice cast contains "an ex-stripper who is tough as nails", contestant Alla Wartenberg's profile on the show's website fails to mention that working under the impossibly obvious stage name "Ecstasy" at the Palomino Club in Vegas was part of her fulfillment of "the American Dream." The Smoking Gun uncovers the lost pole-dancing section of her CV and discovers that one of her frequent lap-dance partners was a three-time murderer:

· Creepy Stunt-Casting Alert! Former Demi Moore spouse Bruce Willis will appear on an episode of That 70s Show with current Moore boyfriend/possible impregnator Ashton Kutcher. Self-referential jokes about sharing the same woman will certainly follow (and, we suspect, a surprise Moore cameo). Creepiness-mitigating silver lining: Willis is donating his fee to the Red Cross. [Variety]
· Paramount enables Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese to author a fourth chapter in their cinematic love affair, optioning the rights to the Teddy Roosevelt bio The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Sounds like an Oscar-baiting vehicle in which DiCaprio gets to physically transform himself from an asthmatic, 25 year-old wimp to a "burly," somewhat less wimpy-seeming Rough Rider. We'll do our best not to laugh at Leo in Teddy's signature moustache. [Variety]
· Monster's Ball director Mark Forster will direct the adaptation of the mega-best-selling The Kite Runner for DreamWorks. Or for Universal, or for whatever big studio eventually buys up what's left of Steven Spielberg's dreams. [THR]
· Fox wins Sunday night with football, The Simpsons, and The Family Guy. [THR]
· Ang Lee's gay cowboy yarn, Brokeback Mountain, wins the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion. But American audiences have to wait until December 9th to witness Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal's hot cowpoking action. [Variety]

It's been over a week since the tabloids knocked on Sienna Miller's stomach to listen for the echoes of an empty womb, or the telltale dull thud indicating she's full of the product of nanny-probing fiancée Jude Law's turbulent love. The tabs, unfortunately, are still getting maddeningly mixed signals. From Rush & Molloy:

With the Fall television season kicking off, networks are trying new and exciting ways to distinguish their shows from the others in a crowded marketplace. Blogging.la's Will Campbell came across an ad in Entertainment Weekly (fun fact: if you ignore those renewal notices, they eventually stop sending you new issues, thus freeing up your bathroom time for the consumption of actual literature!) for NBC's My Name is Earl that was so effective in its attention-grabbing mission that it demanded immediate destruction: