Good news for all of the nerds who've had wet dreams about Hermione since age twelve - Harry Potter actress Emma Watson is applying to college, and she's thinking about leaving the esteemed halls of Hogwarts and heading to the States to get her education! We're sure the rising seniors over at Sigma Alpha Epsilon will be taking bets on who will nail her first while eager potential dormmates list "magic" and "sorcery" as interests when filling out their roommate request forms. Watson, who apparently garnered straight A's in high school finishing exams (Ooh! Sounds fancy!), says she hopes to be a part of a liberal arts program in the U.S. But after recent reports that new student James Franco was being stalked by hordes of psycho freshman while studying at the Columbia University library, we've learned the campus grounds aren't the safest confines for the cream of Young Hollywood's crop.In fact, some schools are flat out rejecting stars for the unwanted distraction they bring to the classroom. Last spring, Brooke Hogan was denied admission at three colleges in Florida when she was told the nine-camera production team behind her VH1 reality show Brooke Knows Best would disrupt the academic livelihood of other students - which is unfortunate, as she clearly needs the education. At the University of Southern California, the fine institution from which I recently graduated, there were many "star" students. Freshman year, Lee Thompson Young, vaguely known for his starring role on Disney's long-lost series The Famous Jett Jackson, was constantly ridiculed for his penchant for wearing exclusively all-white ensembles around campus ... classy. When Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos was boning Paris, girls used to flock to his English classes in the hopes of impressing him with their knowledge of Kafka. And rumor had it that David Gallagher, who played that goody-two-shoes with a bowl cut Simon from 7th Heaven, was a huge stoner who shacked up with a stripper in a house off campus. Point being: Hermione - no matter what you do, you're probably screwed.

Click to viewBoomp3.com The New York University chapter of the Alpha Phi Zeta held their annual fall kick off scavenger hunt over the weekend in the Big Apple. This particular team consisted of a few pledges and their future sorority sister who, according to them, will be victorious in the "Best Photo With A Celebrity" after stumbling upon Pineapple Express star James Franco in the street. Meghan Jefferson, who’s been with the sorority for three years now, believes that this strongest and biggest celebrity photograph so far. Jefferson said, “Last year, Jamie and Sarah got their picture taken with Bill Clinton, which in theory is awesome, but he’s nowhere as hot as James Franco. I mean, look at those eyes and that perky smirk of his. We’re totally going to get control of the DVR for the next two months.” [Photo Credit: Splash Pics] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

So at some point for some magazine, director Gus Van Sant sat down and had a chat with one of his Milk stars, James Franco. Franco is a dreamy actor (and maybe rapist, I am a terrible person) who plays gay in the movie. The point is, they get talking about Zac Efron, the elfin star of the High School Musical movies. I don't know what to say about it, so I'm just going to post it after the jump:

Is He On The Meal Plan?: Not since Jake Gyllenhaal was chased down the halls of the Butler Library by a mob of screaming frosh students screaming, "It's that kid from October Skyyyyyy!!!" has the Columbia campus been so gripped by an outbreak of Bookish Matinee Idol Fever:"'[James Franco] was studying in the school's Butler Cafe the other night when a crowd gathered, "particularly the type of ridiculous, squealing freshman girl . . . all harassing the poor guy,' writes student Vesal Yazdi in the Columbia Spectator. '[They] were shameless enough to literally go right up to him...Do a bit of subtle ogling, but don't stand around the entrance like a pack of starving vultures." [Page Six]

The twits at Columbia can be so déclassé: as Vesal Yazdi wrote in the university's Spectator (and as noted by Page Six), they surrounded actor James Franco like cats in heat as he was trying to study in a campus cafe (he's going for his master's in writing at NYU.) They were "crowd[ing] around him and star[ing] into his face and the emails on his Mac..."

• Raffaello Follieri is expected to appear in court later this morning and plead guilty to wire fraud and money laundering, a deal that will land him a jail term of 51 to 63 months. [NYP]

· The story we could just never seem to wrap our heads around—that of Sean Avery, former New York Rangers player and Vogue (for women) fashion intern—will perhaps reveal its mysteries in New Line's movie about his slapshot-fabulous life. (Hey—Slapshot Fabulous! There's your title!) [THR] · More online-incubated series pickups: CBS ordered We Need Girlfriends, based on the YouTube series of the same name, and put the Cavemen team of Bill Martin and Mike Schiff in charge. [Variety] · So we can't have an Arrested Development movie, but we can have a Blue Man Group movie? Where is the justice? (And Tobias is available for readings.) [Variety] · David Strathairn, Alan Alda, Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker and Paul Rudd have joined the cast of Howl, which already stars James Franco in yet another movie based on the life of a famous American Gay. (Keep it coming, Franco!) [THR] · Amanda Seyfriend and Channing Tatum will play star-crossed, wartime lovers in Dear John, based on a book by the same author as The Notebook. We understand that there's only a nominal amount of stepping-up involved. [Variety]

Rape Watch 2008 continues. Yesterday we wondered about the identity of the blind item gay rapist, going so far as to put it to a poll for y'all to answer. And answer you did, resoundingly. While Will Smith pursued his happyness to an early lead, the srsly detailed evidence that it's dreamy (sigh) Columbia-bound actor/writer James Franco eventually won you over. You can read between the lines! And, no, friends. It's not Vin Diesel. So good job there. Also, two interesting questions were posed by commenters: "I like how everyone says it can't be Christian Bale, because he's married, but no one mentions that Will Smith is married." (because it's black marriage, that doesn't count!) and "I wonder how exciting and fun-to-speculate-about this would be if the actor in question had raped a woman." (don't worry, men can take it!) So yeah. This whole thing is pretty sad, isn't it?

So, remember that blind item from Monday about the "hunk in a summer movie" who is secretly gay and violent and awful and sneaked into his boyfriend's house and raped him? It's one of the crazier blind items we've read, and has been the Talk of the Internet (the whole internet! even Alex Balk is intrigued!) this week, with people desperately trying to figure out which star is Just Like Us. I mean, not like us. The opposite of us. Out of the dense fog of speculation, three clear candidates have emerged: Christian Bale, Will Smith, and (gasp!) James Franco. Christian Bale could be the gay rapist because he already murdered his mother then salted the earth so no other moms could grow. Plus we don't know much about his personal life other than that he's married. You know, to a lady. Still, doesn't mean he's not a disco-dancing, Oscar Wilde-reading, Streisand ticket-holding, friend of Dorothy. The scuttlebutt around the big celebrity weeklies is that it was the American Psycho who committed the heinous act. It could be Will Smith who got non-consensually jiggy because gay rumors have plagued him for years, reaching a fever pitch as fellow possible-'mo Tom Cruise led him (by which body part??!) into the dank recesses of Scientology-a supermarket checkout rack religion often thought to be a celebrity haven for gaydom and tax dodging. Plus he played a homosexual gay person in a movie once! The violence stuff would be news to me, but who knows what roiling darkness lurks in the heart of the Fresh Prince? Plus this guy says it was Will, though he implies that it was just rough sex play, not rape. And then there's the compelling case of James Franco. Basically the rumor is that Franco dated the guy about two years ago, and still had a key to his house. Guy goes to an Oscars party, comes back and Franco is waiting for him and then awfulness goes down. He's rumored to have been abusive towards an old girlfriend, also an actor, some five years ago. This makes me sad because James Franco is dreamy and oh if he were gay we'd surely be married next spring, but if he's a raper then I don't want anything to do with him and he should be in jail. So. Boo. I dunno. He does do a wicked James Dean, who, as we know, was a buggerer. Plus, he's leaving the leggy blond bimbos of Los Angeles to go to writing school in New York. That's pretty geigh. So who do you think it is? Take our Very Important Poll below and weigh in on this highly galvanizing matter. (And don't say anything stupid in the comments... it's a 'Mo News Day.)

We apologize for being a little behind the gun on this clip from Friday's Jimmy Kimmel Live!, but we'd hate for the week to go by without acquainting you with It-Boy Ascendant James Franco, and his lovely stories from the set of Gus Van Sant's Milk. With a rough-sex outline Scotch-taped between the third and fourth pages of the shooting script, Franco quickly realized he was in for the Crisco-assisted ride of a lifetime—but it's this born raconteur's rubber-member reminiscences that really won us over. Enjoy, with someone you love.

The untimely death of Heath Ledger left a void in the acting community. In terms of his actual person, yes, but also in what he represented. A subdued, thoughtful actor who shied away from the press, who made a quiet regular guy life for himself when he wasn't emoting really well for lots and lots of money. So, for useless speculation's sake, who will fill that role now, where is our next, uh, sorta-dark knight? Ledger's Brokeback Mountain costar Jake Gyllenhaal is too splashy. Other broody types like Josh Hartnett haven't quite got that leading-man-with-gravitas movie star thing down. So we think it might be James Franco, who is, like Ledger before he died, just beginning the second act of his career.

Smokin': Those early estimates that pegged Pineapple Express for a superb $10 million Wednesday opening may have turned out to be conservative. Another box-office observer sends word that the year's biggest stoner comedy/Franco-sex-appeal testimonial in fact raked in $12.15 million in its first day — a fairly staggering figure for an R-rated comedy. Bowing on a Wednesday. In the first week of August. The revised tracking also suggests Express has enough momentum to wrest box-office superiority from The Dark Knight this weekend, but we're not so sure: The same tracking suggested The Mummy 3 would have similar success last weekend (it didn't), and in any case, Express will need all of its five-day numbers — as much as $45 million by some estimates — just to beat Dark Knight's three-day figure. Check out tomorrow morning's Defamer Attractions column, where we'll call our official shot. [Fantasy Moguls]

Well, it seems as though the SharkDevouringKittenGate scandal that swum up and bit Pineapple Express on its opening day (quick review: the T-shirt James Franco wears throughout the entire movie is accused of being a WOWCH label design from three years ago) has done little to scare moviegoers from these waters, as Nikki Finke is reporting the movie has taken $10 million yesterday; that's some kind of August record, she suggests vaguely while waving away thick clouds of ganja smoke and trying to look like she's enjoying the party. Approached for comment on the wardrobe controversy, meanwhile, Pineapple star James Franco had no patience for the allegations, telling the NY Daily News, "That's ridiculous...We completely created that shirt and that shark. David wanted me to wear a purple Monterey Bay T-shirt with a whale on it. I said I wasn't into the whale shirt, so he came up with his own design, which was the shark."There—all settled. We haven't seen this much fuss over a T-shirt design since VoteForPedroGate, when a City of Industry town hall representative accused the producers of Napoleon Dynamite of decal plagiarism. Frankly, we're more interested in the exchange that followed, when two hot chicks interrupted the interview:

Earlier this week we brought you damning evidence that the new Seth Rogen comedy Pineapple Express may have engaged in the shocking, unauthorized theft of a t-shirt design from a small Brooklyn company called WOWCH. The scandal now threatens to swamp the movie's marketing efforts like a tidal wave of justice. James Franco, the shifty long-haired actor who was the wearer of the shirt in question, took a brief break from seducing swooning women in order to stammer a denial of the crime's very existence:

After filming a scene for the upcoming season of Desperate Housewives, Eva Longoria Parker took out a stack of bills and began to count out loud at a very high volume. One crewmember asked if Longoria Parker was going to practice her stealth tipping skills, but the popular actress said that her husband is the undercover tipper in their relationship. Another crewmember thought that Longoria Parker might be headed to the Spearmint Rhino to make it rain. Longoria shook her head and said, "Wrong. All wrong. It's my snack money for when I see Pineapple Express at the Americana tonight, dudes. Skittles and James Franco, crazy delicious!"

• Jennifer Aniston is turning 40 in February, childless and unwed. No one cares except the actress herself, who according to OK!'s source is "at an age where she is thinking with her head not just her heart" and according to Star's source is telling friends "it's my turn now" to have babies in the manner of a certain bitch who stole away a certain man from a certain starlet who is so not bitter and so totally over him. So Aniston is already planning the "Wedding Of The Year" even though, apparently, the groom hasn't even proposed yet?? Getting two tabloids involved is a bit much pressure on poor John Mayer, no?

• Tommy Hilfiger and Dee Ocleppo were supposed to have two weddings coming up—one in Mustique and one at The Plaza—but now they're having none because the whole wedding has been called off. The Post's suggestion: "Maybe he should rethink his hairpiece." [Page Six]

Sartorial scandal alert: Is the upcoming Seth Rogen film Pineapple Express guilty of wanton t-shirt design theft? A small Brooklyn t-shirt maker called WOWCH says that co-star James Franco's character appears in the movie wearing shark-and-kitten shirt that is really just a slightly altered version of a WOWCH design that was sold at Urban Outfitters in 2005. But the big stars don't give the little guys credit at all! The photographic evidence for this potential merchandising mockery-and the demands for redress-after the jump.

Stopping by Late Show to drum up interest in Pineapple Express, James Franco admitted to David Letterman that this was only his second-ever experience on a talk show. The first was two years ago, when he appeared on The Tony Danza Show: A lightly surreal daytime chatfest hosted by everyone's favorite Who's The Boss-star and guido savante, it relied perhaps a little too heavily on ill-conceived gimmicks and stunts. (The Plinkoesque call-in trivia game Extravadanza immediately pops to mind.) Sure enough, learning that Franco played a boxer in a "horrible movie" he refrains from naming (Annapolis! It was Annapolis!), Danza challenged him first to a push-up contest, and, after Franco politely rejected that offer, a Hook-the-Ring decathalon event that still induces involuntarily facial-twitching and regular nightmares of Danza's "I'm the Lord of the Ring-Hookers!" victory dance.

Julianne Moore playing with her kids, Caleb and Liv, on the sidewalk outside Bar Pitti ... Chris Brown walking with his bodyguard in midtown ... Maroon 5's Adam Levine hopping out of his tour bus in SoHo ... Ed Westwick showing off some shiny purple pants on the set of Gossip Girl ... Matt Lauer walking home from work ... Jennifer Esposito riding her bike through the meatpacking district ... Marc Ecko checking out an art exhibition in SoHo ... Chris Noth filming an episode of Law & Order ... and James Franco and Pamela Anderson arriving at The Late Show.