It took us days to finally push thoughts of Marcia Cross, Teri Hatcher, and Eva Longoria wrapped in the ultimate Desperate Housewives subplot (not to get too graphic here, but it involved a borrowed cup of flour, a Costco-sized tub of baby oil, and tiny-to-the-point-of-impracticality aprons), but then we got this glimpse of the Advocate cover that had originally kicked off the rumor binge, and we're forced to ponder Cross's sexual preference anew. Moving at the speed of magazine-light (and, we suspect, cheating by using a time machine), the Advocate has managed to splash a story about the rumor about Cross coming out in their pages on the cover of the very same issue that supposedly contained the story that spawned the rumor. Yes, we have a headache. And please, don't even consider the possibility that a savvy viral marketer from the Advocate planted the original rumor at the Data Lounge, lest your brain leak out of your ear.

Because it's the Friday before a three-day weekend and we're feeling generous, we thought we'd dust off a feature we haven't done in a long time, the Defamer Blind Item. Item difficulty: 7 out of 10, where 1 is "mind-bendingly difficult" and 10 is "any attempt to figure it out will result in an aneurysm."

If you look really closely, you can pretend that you see Marcia Cross's tongue hungrily probing Felicity Huffman's ear. And where's her other hand?

The TiVo is on the fritz, so here's our incredibly shoddy transcription of Marcia Cross's first few, damage-controlling, lez-rumor-denyin' minutes on The View:

While the Gawker Worldwide Blogging Concern's server were taking their tri-monthly crack holiday early yesterday evening, Marcia Cross' publicist was busy denying the rumors that the Desperate Housewife prefers the sexual apparatus of women to that of men to Entertainment Tonight. According to the flack, the whispers are "completely untrue," but Marcia is "very supportive of the gay and lesbian community." Apparently, the truth is worse than we thought. If Cross finally lands on the cover of the Advocate, she'll probably reveal that she's been living in a polyamorous Sapphic paradise in the Hills with three generations of television lesbian life-partners, with Andy Dick as her part-time rent-boy.

The rumor (originally spread at this DataLounge thread) that one of the Desperate Housewives cast was imminently donning a pantsuit on the cover of The Advocate to let the world know about her preference for female genitalia in matters of sexual gratification has spread through the media like Mexican tapwater through a Tijuana tourist. Now the always-reliable British tabs are reporting that the LPGA-loving Housewife in question is Marcia Cross. Says The Sun: "Everyone on the show is aware of Marcia's leanings, as is the rest of Hollywood." There you have it: If you believe the Brits, Cross will never blow another casting director again. The female casting execs in town, however, are doing a little jig over the possibilities.

· ArcLight face-off coming: Rocky vs. Rocky.
· New blog alert, and this one's getting bookmarked immediately: Ugly Breast Implants [NSFW, via Fleshbot]
· Given all the Desperate Housewives outing chatter, this is certainly an interesting eBay auction title: "Female Perversions DVD Marcia Cross Nude lesbian stuff"
· Rick Fox stuns Hollywood dining companions by talking to regular people. Is he trying to destroy the entire social order?
· "LIKE WHT YOU SAY ABOUT OSAMA BIN LADEN: WE DONT KNOW A LOT - BUT WE ARE FRAID - BECAUSE OF 11.9. - SO WITHOUT ANY INFORMATIONS ABOUT THE ALIENS WE ALL FEEL NOTHING - WE ARE ALL CONFUSED BUT LETS SAY YOU NEVER WOULD HAVE SHOWED AN ALIEN IN SIGN - IT WOULD BE A DESASTER - NOBODY WOULD TAKE IT SERIOUS!!" A frustrated screenwriter reproduces e-mails of Alone in the Dark director Uwe Boll.
· Ossie Davis and Dean Wormer die. Hollywood holds it breath and waits for the inevitable third celebrity passing.

We're a little late to this particular party, but there's a thread over at the DataLounge discussing the possibility that a cast member at Desperate Housewives (consensus seems to say it's an actress) is about to go all Cynthia Nixon on a mostly-unsuspecting public:

While we're in a correcting and setting-the-record-straight kinda mood, another attendee of the Desperate Housewives media event offers another take on what went down:

Remember that endearingly self-effacing acceptance speech that Teri Hatcher gave after winning a Golden Globe last Sunday? The one where she tearily admitted that her career was in the dumpster before Desperate Housewives came along? Maybe all of that post-Globe partying erased that part of her memory, as she was a no-show at a publicity event last night. An anonymous media member reports that the Housewives set might be getting a lot more divatastic in the near future:

Now that Desperate Housewives is a bonafide, world-beating megahit, the product placement vultures are circling. KB Home, maker of fine tract housing, want to brand the houses of the Wisteria Lane, where everyone's favorite outrageous homemakers kill their neighbors, pop their pills, and pork their vaguely ethnic, jailbait gardeners. You know, just like people that would want to live in KB homes! One problem, though. The houses on Wisteria Lane have, like, history and shit:

Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are sent in by our readers. Send yours to tips@defamer.com and ensure that Teri Hatcher feels bad the other Housewives are dining without her.

We thought we'd get through the rest of the day without a neurotic actress defending her obviously natural beauty from accusations that she's gone under the knife, but this Access Hollywood press release has brazenly relieved itself all over that idea. It seems that Desperate Housewives' Nicolette Sheridan is so anxious to convince the world that she's never been to a plastic surgeon that... she went to a plastic surgeon. How mindbogglingly Zen!