Hey, folks, Mark Lisanti here.

Hello, folks, Mark Lisanti here. I've returned from yet another all-too-brief hiatus from the blogging grind. But please don't think that I put aside my responsibilities to go cavorting in some hedonistic paradise where the blow is served in hollowed out coconuts and delivered to your cabana by a volcano-ready virgin. No, this was a working vacation. Unfortunately, a pretty comprehensive nondisclosure agreement prohibits me from divulging the details, but suffice it to say that when Brian Grazer offers you a million dollars to carve his likeness into a pumpkin, you call in sick to the day job and learn to love the feeling of seedy, orange guts running between your fingers.

By now, you may have figured out that Defamer has been plagued by technical difficulties (read: Nick Denton failed to transfer protection monies from secret Caymanian tax shelter to Hungarian Mob-run server company) all afternoon. We wish that the abrupt interruption of content was due to our drinking of a bottle of absinthe and relaxing in the "jacuzzi" (a large pothole filled with rainwater on the street outside Defamer HQ), but we were all out of absinthe. (Note to intern: messenger over a case of the stuff and a rubber duckie in case the problems reappear tomorrow.) Enjoy this smattering of end-of-the-day links until we return in the morning:
· If Details is to be believed, Chris Klein wasn't sent on an all-expenses paid trip to the Antarctica Celebrity Centre after ex-fiancée Katie Holmes found her true soulmate. Klein's totally out there and getting crazy laid, bro.
· Scotty's remains are getting launched into space. Accordingly, when William Shatner passes on, his ashes will be placed between the thighs of a nymphomaniac semihumanoid female alien.
· People will soon bestow its greatest honor, "The Sexiest Man Alive (Who Isn't Afraid Of Having His Career Or Love Life Destroyed By The Cover Jinx)." This is looking like Vin Diesel's lucky year!
· Suicidal celebrities, take note: If you follow through and tragically take your own life, your obit will inevitably reference your IMDb profile.

We're so very proud of Deadspin, the Gawker Media International Blogging Concern Unlimited, LLC™'s new sports blog, which has been tapped as Yahoo's Pick of the Day. (More importantly, our boss, the generously becraniumed semi-evil Hungarian blogging overlord Nick Denton is happy, subtracting 300 cruel lashes from today's whipping in celebration.) We especially love the way that editor Will Leitch has been tracking bloated vitamin B-12 enthusiast Barry Bonds' website and pointing to sites that pile up stats on former quarterback Phil Simms' homoerotic ramblings. You know what we also love, secretly? Those 300 lashes we won't be getting for posting this. Daddy's tough love hurts so good.

Hi, everybody, Mark Lisanti here. I know that some of you were a little shaken up (read: delighted) by my sudden and unexplained absence, but unlike the father that refused to pretend that he was just "going out for cigarettes" and plainly told a five-year-old Defamer "I never much liked you, kid, and I'm leaving forever because of you—do you hear me?—it's your fault, you little bedwetter," I have returned. I will immediately resume disappointing you in the manner to which you've become accustomed.

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.

Join us in welcoming brand-spanking-new baby brother blog Deadspin into the baby-eating cult family, the Gawker Worldwide Blogging Concern's sports-obsessed gift to reduced workday productivity. New editor Will Leitch (of The Black Table and Gawker guest-editing fame) explains the blog's mission thusly:

You give and give and give, and yet we continue to ask you for more. This time, The Gawker Media International Blogging Concern™ is greedily grabbing for your sartorial opinions. We're preparing a new round of Defamer-flavored t-shirts, and our evil blogging overlords back at the Mothership would like you to vote on which t-shirt slogans you'd like to see stretched over the breast/pec implants of your favorite co-worker. And if you don't find the current offerings to your liking, you can submit ideas and/or designs of your own (follow the link to the instructions, please don't e-mail them here), for which you will be paid in actual US dollars or the preferred currency of internet sweatshops, the shirts themselves. Come on, vote! It's more fun than a bathroom stall full of exhausted starlets!

Unfortunately, his lucky Gap khakis failed him.

Our arousing, alluring, and altogether sexilicious brother Fleshbot is still seeking some talented new writers. More bodacious than "supervising" a shift at Hooters, more literarily smutty than fetching coffee at Nerve, it's simply the hottest, raunchiest, dirtiest, most delicious, most climactic writing job there is. Here's what Pervy McPerv came out of his locked bedroom long enough to say:

Dear Gawker Readers,

· Because so many of you have asked us to comment on what is surely our jump-the-shark moment (guest blogging tomorrow: Ralph Macchio and Ted McGinley), we have only two things to say. Firstly, we begged them to use the photo of us shaking our finger in disapproval at a baby dressed in a diaper reading "Hollywood," but they apparently decided that the frowny, sullen one better communicated the essence of the blogging life. Second, and more importantly, Defamer HQ has TWO air-conditioners. But we thank everyone who wrote in to decry Nick Denton, our generously becraniumed overlord, as a literal sweatshop owner. Those messages were fun to read, and kept us feeling far more refreshed than those air conditioners ever could. OK, now we're done talking about something that can be expressed so much better by cutting.
· It's probably really unfair of us to link to this picture of Colin Farrell performing pantomimed acts of manual and oral stimulation without any context, but we're going to do it anyway.
· If Jimi Hendrix had to pretend to be gay to get out of Vietnam, more power to him. It's not his fault the country was too shortsighted to offer a "greatest fucking guitarist who ever lived" exemption.
· Tinfoil helmet department: Here's an interesting, in highly unlikely, conspiracy theory involving The Aristocrats.

From the inbox, a reader longs for more:

There was apparently some important play going on here, but an intern brought Corona and we stopped watching.

No, seriously. We've been up since before 7 AM, wanting nothing more to post on this here web-log but, alas, our server ate its own small intestine and then crapped itself out. As such, we're just getting back online now.

Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are sent in by our readers. Send yours to tips@defamer.com (putting privacywatch or sighting in the subject line helps make sure they don't get lost in our inbox) and let the world know that Mischa Barton's got a lot of junk in the trunk for a skinny chick.

We now pause to throw a brief party (complete with ice cream cake and a manic-depressive clown) for this week's sponsors, who help keep all of our internet-related dreams alive. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and gain access to the vast cash stores of our sexy, sexy readers, see this page.

· Christian Slater's got some fight left in him yet, refusing to admit to any grab-assing activities.
· Hey, unicorns!
· "Freddie Highmore, the actor portraying Charlie Bucket, will fall on hard times in his adulthood and star in the porno movie Charlie and the Bukkake Factory: 84/1" Over at Oddjack, blogging's Matthew Tobey handicaps Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
· American Idle does a nice job of fantasy-casting the movie version of Dallas, even if the imaginary above-the-line budget would be ridiculous.
· Thanks to Defamer's slut-loving readership, Los Angeles has pulled neck-and-neck with Bangkok in Gridskipper's World Sluttiest City voting. Now it's time to demonstrate your full might and show the world that L.A. is the most slut-friendly municipality anywhere! Feh on your readily available comfort women, Bangkok, our fine city has legions of aspiring actors willing to do whatever it takes to be cast in Big Brother 6!

· Three for Thursday: The Dwarves at the Troudadour; Gemma Hayes at Largo; Kinski does double-duty, giving it away for free at Amoeba at 7pm before heading to the Echo.
· It's opening night for David Auburn's play Proof at the Flight Theatre, giving you a chance to get a look at it before your life is changed forever by the big-screen version with Gwyneth Paltrow.
· Today's Bastille Day? Who knew? If you've got $75 to burn, Mix will serve you a five-course meal and some champagne to help celebrate. Assuming, of course, that you don't have something against the French.