The Emmys, Oscar's Paste-Eating Cousin™, will broadcast live on ABC this Sunday, presided over by a Frankenhost monster conceived in a test tube by devious tinkerers from the science wing of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The Creative Arts portion of the awards, however, were held Saturday at the Nokia Theater. It was an evening for some of the year's more specialized TV achievements—from those of Matt Damon-fornicating singer-songwriter Sarah Silverman to the hairdo Michelangelos of Mad Men, spinning beehives into gold—to receive their due. Kathy Griffin took best reality program for her second year in a row, this time eschewing acceptance speeches commanding the Prince of Peace to "suck it" in favor of less blasphemous shows of appreciation. From Gold Derby:

So Mad Men creator/EP/spiritual shepherd Matthew Weiner realizes he's sitting on something pretty special with his cast of desk-hopping, Brylcreemed creatives over at Sterling Cooper. Perhaps it was the 16 Emmy nominations that tipped him off. ("Don't think of them as Emmy awards," his inner Don Draper will intone on the big night, "Think of them as tiny angels, flapping their pointy wings to a place where fear doesn't live. They're saying, 'You are OK, Matt...It's all...OK.'") Weiner's contract with the show's studio, Lionsgate TV, is up at the end of this season, and Variety reports he's been shopping himself around town to the highest bidder:

· Attack of the Show producer Gavin Purcell is leaving G4 to co-produce Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. He'll presumably user-test some of his edgier, hot-dog-deep-throating ideas on the web-only show before Fallon's NBC debut. [Variety] · Bad news: Stargate: Atlantis will not get a sixth-season order from SciFi Channel. Good news: Stargate: Universe, a whole new Stargate series, is set to begin. Even better news: Stargate: Babies can't be far behind! [THR] · Neil Patrick Harris and Sarah Chalke will host the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards Sept. 13th, to be aired on E! one week later. Britney Spears will be a last-minute guest-patterer, in a performance Harris will backhandedly compliment on the talk show circuit. [Variety] · Nicolas Cage will star in Kick-Ass, to later be renamed Awe-Some in pursuit of an all-important PG-13 rating. [THR] · Freeze, sucka! Regina King, Kevin Alejandro and Michael McGrady have been cast in NBC pilot LAPD. [THR]

Though Steve Carell is a perennial Emmy nominee for his work on The Office, he's never taken home a trophy of his own (even as the show itself won the Outstanding Comedy Award in 2006). Now, the LAT's easily excitable Tom O'Neill thinks he's nailed the reason why: Carell is just too darn creepy in the role.

After last year's Ryan Seacrest-in-the-round extravaganza, today comes more exciting news about a significant shakeup in the Emmy Awards format: This year's ceremony, scheduled for September 21 at the roomy Nokia Theatre, will be presided over by the five nominees in the new category of best reality host. (The shape of the stage is still under wraps, but we hear ABC is toying with an M.C. Escher-inspired endless staircase design that will provide raked seating for days!) Seacrest, nominated for his hosting duties on American Idol, will be joined by Survivor's Jeff Probst, Dancing with the Stars's Tom Bergeron, Deal or No Deal's Howie Mandel, and Project Runway's Heidi Klum. We've run promotional photos of all five hosts through our Defamer Combine-O-Tron 2000 (patent pending; any similarities to Late Night's If They Mated completely coincidental) to see what the host would look like if they melded them into one. The result? A not-particuarly-telegenic überhost, and distant cousin of the rare and wonderful pigkey! [Photos: LAT]

Our heartiest congratulations to Alec Baldwin on earning his amazing seventh Emmy nomination—and the second for his consistently inspired work as 30 Rock's Jack Donaghy, whom last we saw hovering over Rip Torn's hospital bed and praying for a coma-rousing miracle. To honor the man who is well on his way towards becoming the country's first Baldwin President, we provide this excerpt from a new THR.com interview.

All these shows-nominated either for best dramatic series (the first six) or best comedy series (the latter five) in this year's Emmys-are perfectly worthy contenders. And the final season of The Wire, HBO's gritty drama set in a corrupt and decaying Baltimore, wasn't quite the climax that fans of the David Simon show had hoped for. But it's an injustice that such a brilliant piece of work, which turned the dismal failures of public policy into heartbreaking human tragedy, should have ended its run without a single nod.

After a whirlwind month of snubbing her fame-enabling Grey’s Anatomy writers, the entire Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and anyone unlucky enough to get a whiff of her second-hand smoke, Katherine Heigl is somehow still idolized and worshiped by her emasculated husband Joshua Kelley. As we noted yesterday, Heigl spent most of Kelley’s weekend gig at Hotel Cafe shouting out requests for songs, songs which have all been recently altered to include the name Katie in place of any other girl’s name. But most disturbingly, the “rocker” reportedly overshared the fact that he had “curled her hair” before the show. And just how important is it that Kelley spend his pre-show time grooming his pompous pony? So important that he’s suffered third-degree burns and dehabilitated his ability to play the guitar, all in the name of love. The excruciating details, after the jump.

· We defy you to watch Tyra Banks's Daytime Emmys acceptance speech for Best Talk Show (Informative) without getting a little bit moist-eyed. We especially liked her shout-out to Oprah, whose crown she's clearly claiming. You usurp, girl! [Tyra]
· Well, that was fun while it lasted: "This site has been closed. LucasFilm has asked us to remove this site. We have enjoyed seeing the tens of thousands of users over the past several days, and thank you for your interest." [StarWarsCrawl.com]
· Vassup! 105 people were invited to become voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, including Sacha Baron Cohen and Judd Apatow. [oscars.org]
· Dody Goodman, aka the fumbling Rydell High P.A.-system-xylophonist Blanche from Grease, also passed yesterday, at age 93. [USA Today]
· Heidi Montag has a single called "Fashion." It's the "greatest song of my life," says partner Spencer Pratt, who suffers from a rare neurological disorder which causes him to love the sound of a cat being cranked through a Vocoder-equipped meat grinder. [Us Magazine]

It's been two days now since our relatively peaceful, reacharound-loving community has been rocked by "I Do Not Feel I Was Given the Material This Season to Warrant a Nomination"-Gate. For those late to the party: Gold Derby blog had noticed polarizing actress-figure Katherine Heigl's name missing from a list of contenders; approached for comment, she explained that she had knowingly compromised Emmy-nominating protocol—and by extension, the very fundamentals upon which this great country is based!—by gallingly withdrawing herself from Best Actress consideration. And for what? For what she deemed to be substandard character arcs for her character on Grey's Anatomy. (In Heigl's defense, in Season 2 she was curled up in a hospital bed with her expired fiance; this season, she had a brief dalliance with her gay best friend followed by a torrid affair with a homicidal caribou.) Still, according to one series insider who spoke to EW.com, the thanklessness is beyond belief:

The Primetime Emmy nominations will be announced next month, and the "For Your Consideration..." ads are in full beg mode. Will William Shatner and James Spader get their 110th nominations? And what of Kelsey Grammer, late of the sorta-okay-but-canceled Back to You? Will Sideshow Bob become one of lady Emmy's most winningest? Magazines like Entertainment Weekly have already run articles listing their ideal Emmy nominees, so we thought we'd follow suit. How about some love for The Paper? And what of the criminally (heh) overlooked The Wire? After the jump find some (maybe out-there) suggestions for each of the Big 10 categories.

Conan O'Brien was the lead guest on The Tonight Show last night, and he graciously left behind his tape measure and fabric swatches, while Jay Leno kept his passive aggressive put-downs of his scheduled usurper to a comfortable minimum. Among his entertaining anecdotes, Conan recalled the time he hosted the Emmys of two years ago—before Fox got their cracked-out claws into them, and transformed the ceremony into a one-ringed-circus presided over by Master of Women's-Footwear-Identifying-Ceremonies Ryan Seacrest. Describing the tense scene from the wings, Conan recalled an increasingly desperate stage manager giving a live play-by-play of the Charlie's Angels diva-feud that could very well have altered the course of Aaron Spelling Production cast reunion history forever.

Until now, court shows went mostly unheralded by the TV producing establishment, despite their appellates delighting millions via the meting out of their own brand of sassy justice ladled with a generous helping of snappy catchphrases. But even in the realm of after-school, syndie-strip law, rights can be wronged, as organizers of the Daytime Emmys have just announced that court shows will finally be getting their own category:

· In Extreme Fighting Championship: Mogul Edition, Liberty Media head John Malone and a major shareholder in Barry Diller's IAC took Diller to court over Diller's plan to split his company into five not-so-easy pieces. In his opening day testimony, he accused Diller of selfishly referring to their warm-and-fuzzy, communal corporate multi-conglomerate as "his business," and of having mastered the "'fine art' of taking advantage of the corporate jet." There really is a fine art to that, as Diller has been known to order in entire water polo teams when he suddenly develops a midnight hankering for some Italian. [Variety]
· As soon as celebrated fauxteur Brett Ratner finishes shooting on his Imagine Playboy movie (to be released simultaneously in IMAX Bunny-D!), his next project is looking to be a live-action version of '90s comic book series Harbinger. [Variety]

Last night, nestled in an episode of the consistently hilarious 30 Rock starring Carrie Fisher as the ghost of Liz Lemon's schizophrenic, rat-infested future, was a scene of less than two minutes in duration that could easily go down as one the greatest acting triumphs of this or any other generation. In it, Sir Alec Baldwin (is he not a Sir yet? Because he should be) inhabits no less than five figures from Tracy Jordan's formative years, seamlessly traversing age, gender, and ethnic lines with a proficiency that would make a bitterly envious Eddie Murphy storm out of the room faster than he did on Oscar night. Jack Donaghy, we salute you.

While the scintillating debate about whether Fox's censors directed the profanity-erasing silence-rays of its Sphere of Censorship against Sally Field for either the "goddamned" or "no more...wars" portions of her rambling acceptance speech rages on, we thought it would be fun to share a clip of some the filthy, filthy things that the network's Standards & Practices allowed on the air during the Emmys telecast.

We have to admit that we're disappointed in Griffin's admission—we'd secretly hoped that we were witnessing a genuine conversion experience as the comedian publicly prostrated herself before that graven Creative Arts idol and flipped off the Messiah as a pledge of allegiance to her gilded new God, and not just a cynical attempt at seeing how many Tennesseean theater groups she could induce to bankrupt themselves by buying full-page USA Today ads decrying her blasphemy.

Say what you will about Jeremy Piven, but the dude never fails to make love to each and every camera pointed at him following an Emmy win. [Manolo the Shoeblogger]

We enjoy nothing more on the day after the Emmys than to check in with Bravo executive Andy Cohen, on whom we can invariably rely for an uncensored, eyewitness take on the proceedings. Sadly, there is none of the ebullient, "Wowza!!!!!!" -chanting Andy of nomination day in today's post, as much of the air appears to have been taken out of his sails by the roughly 80 people who accepted last night in his category for The Amazing Race. It was a bitter defeat that brought out an ugly side to the blogging bon vivant, who manages in a matter of just a few sentences to disparage such universally beloved figures as America Ferrera, Helen Mirren, and the show's sexually ambiguous, label-divining host:

While being a "perfect storm" of a television executive certainly sounds glamorous, the demands placed on an individual possessed of a heretofore unseen combination of populist taste, dealmaking experience, and the ability to look at a hit foreign series and say, "Yeah, that would probably work in America. Buy ten episodes!" can sometimes slow a party-train to a crawl. Consider the plight of NBC's Ben Silverman, who on Saturday night had a difficult decision to make about his Emmys seating arrangement, a choice that carried significant political ramifications. Reports TV Week's blog: