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.

Click to viewBoomp3.com It must’ve been a case of déjà vu for actor Jonah Hill as a photographer sneaked up on him again while jogging in Hollywood. However, this time around, the photographer did not tempt Hill with cupcakes or other delicious treats. Instead, the photographer was more interested in Hill’s beard and simply asked, “What’s the deal with the beard, dude?” Hill explained that he was growing the beard because he’s going to do a guest spot on Deadliest Catch as well as to make a stab at credibility. Hill said, “Philip Seymour Hoffman has a really nice beard growing there. He’s pretty well respected. Maybe, if I had one of those things, I’d be able to do more dramatic work. Something intense or maybe a part as Nick Nolte’s crazy long lost son.” [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.

Dogs and Cats Living Together: "If I could interest Seth [Rogen] and Judd [Apatow] to be part of [Ghostbusters 3], that would be an absolute dream," says OG Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd to E!, according to Slashfilm. The formerly proton pack-clad Aykroyd reveals that two writers are currently working on the sequel, though at this point, there is no information on how much male full-frontal nudity (or how many ad-libbed pop culture references) the Apatow-aspiring trio plans to include. [Slashfilm]

Oh look. Another Judd Apatow-related semi-sweet comedy. This one's called Role Models, and it features Apatow fixtures old (Paul Rudd) and new (Christopher "McLovin'" Mintz-Plasse). These people are the busiest dudes in the business. We know that comedic actors tend to travel in packs-like the old SNL posse (Murray, Martin, Akroyd) and the Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn/Will Ferrell group-but these gents seem especially tight-knit and disarmingly productive. We're not sure where they get the time, but studios seem eager to throw millions at a bunch of comedies that can be filmed fast and cheap and Apatow and co. seem happy to dance for the nickels. Paul Rudd must never see his kid. Our Photoshop whiz Steve Dressler has put together the chart above, giving you an idea of the guys' large workload.

Does Death's double-dipping have you disturbed? Fret not—we have an easy way to ward of the scythe. Simply slaughter a baby lamb in your office kitchen, collect its blood, then paint that along your cubicle's entrance. The Angel of Death will then skip your workspace to reap the annoyingly high-pitched temp working next door. Enjoy these box office numbers, along with your freshly spared life: 1. The Dark Knight - $26.03 million Tripping up most of the world's most esteemed box office prognosticators—even us, and we're never wrong!—once again was bat-eared juggernaut The Dark Knight. Like a seasoned welterweight pro who knows the fight has 12 rounds, Knight ceded to Pineapple Express until Saturday, when it surged ahead of the stoner crime opera to easily take the weekend. Children, take out your chalk and slates: Plus $26.06 brings us to $441.5 million, making it...? That's right: the third-highest-grossing domestic film of all time, ahead of Shrek 2, poised to creep ahead of Star Wars for the slot behind Titanic by this week's end.2. Pineapple Express - $22.4 million Just as the Pineapple kids were firing up a Friday afternoon fatty and declaring that Batman, in no uncertain Korean terms, should "prepare to suck the cock of karma!" they were served up a lung-singeing cloud of Badpod dust. No matter: $40.4 million in five days is better than any dead-of-summer comedy has any right to do. Judd Apatow can proudly carve another notch in his bedpost, moments before an exhausted Seth Rogen rolls over and keeps his creative life-partner awake all night with deep, satisfied snoring. 3. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - $16.113 million ATTENTION: Hazardous toy recall. If you recently purchased a Rick's Wheelie Motorcycle for your child as part of KFC's The Mummy promotional tie-in, destroy it at once. Your child won't choke on its small parts (the way they do on the accompanying meal's chicken wing bones), but they might start emulating the heroics of Brendan Fraser—potentially forcing you to sit through an entire showing of The Mummy itself. 4. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 - $10.77 million Now showing at West Hollywood's Tomkat theater in conjunction with this sequel's opening is The Brotherhood of the Traveling Chaps 2, an all-male, S&M-themed take on the touching story of a circle of lifelong friends bound by their mutual affection and previously agreed-upon safe words. 5. Step Brothers - $8.9 million We literally have nothing left to say about Step Brothers, so we'll let star Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly do the talking with Step Brothers Duel—an interactive viral marketing effort sure to cheer you up on this death-filled Monday! (We couldn't get the image upload to work. Figures.)

You're nobody in this town until you've been ripped off, and even then you're just a little more bitter nobody until an actual, attributable success comes along. According to a profile today in indieWIRE, director Alex Holdridge can finally lay claim to both stages in his accelerating career arc: His funny, lyrical LA romance In Search of a Midnight Kiss opens theatrically tomorrow in New York (Aug. 22 in Los Angeles), several years after a less-auspicious development left him burned at the Sony gates. Not long after his micro-budget debut Wrong Numbers hit at the 2001 South by Southwest film festival, Holdridge said he had fielded calls from every major studio looking to adapt his comedy about "unruly teens trying to buy beer for a party on their last night of high school" for Hollywood. Sony eventually hired him to write the script on spec, which apparently took a couple years too many for the studio's taste, as Holdridge discovered when he heard about a new Sony project called Superbad:

· If it weren't for Dark Knight news, there wouldn't have been much news at all. After dispatching the Joker, Batman took on his toughest foe to date, the deranged Momzo The Clown (specialty: extortion). Batman denies all of the charges, which is just fine with new Oscar frontrunner Aaron Eckhart. · NBC announced that Jay Leno will be abdicating his Tonight Show throne on May 29, 2009 while a disguised Jay Leno sat in the audience cracking wise. Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon will be spinning his wheels online for a few months before they let him loose on air. · Miley "Slut!" Cyrus took to the YouTubes to wage war on her new rival, Selena Gomez. · If you come within 1,000 yards of Brangelina's test tube babies, Brad Pitt will beat you to a pulp. · We finally learned what Judd Apatow's favorite season of The Wire was. · Surfer dude Matthew McConaughey cashed a $3 million check from OK! for baby pictures of young prince Levi. · Maybe it's just us, but Lyons & Mankiewicz doesn't quite have the same ring as Ebert & Roeper (let alone Siskel & Ebert). · Cuts at Vantage and Netflix made it another tough week for indie film. · Fer sure, fer sure, we counted down our favorite Valley Girls. · Don't bother with MapQuest, NPH can tell you how to get, how to get to Sesame Street. · And finally, the passing of Estelle Getty affected everyone, from teary YouTube eulogists to our own Molly McAleer. The saddest part? None of the Golden Girls made it to the funeral. Nevertheless, the memory of Sophia Petrillo will always live on.

Accosted recently by a Defamer correspondent moments after receiving the first ever Just For Laughs Comedy Person of the Year Award in Montreal, Hollywood comedy baron Judd Apatow somehow agreed to commit to a short interview. Later that night, he'd appear before a rowdy crowd at Club Metropolis, hosting an all-stars comedy event billed as Apatow for Destruction. Judd opened the show by launching into a funny set that explored the not-always-tidy-side of family life and getting older. Soon after came Seth Rogen—basically Judd minus 15-or-so grounding years—with a raunchier act that included a riff on frequent self-pleasuring ("I forgot you could use hand lotion for something other than jerking off..."), and a notable preoccupation with all things gay. (On late-in-life movie star Ian McKellen: "As soon as Magneto lifted those cars, the guys sucking his dick dropped 50 years in age.") Newly announced VMAs host Russell Brand closed out the show. A deeply charismatic stage presence with an indelibly dirty mind, he's as comfortable dropping psychoanalytical insights as he is being a horny goofball (a hilarious bit about the gulping sound that means your oral sex partner really cares) or flippantly self-deprecating ("I use homeless people as scabby wishing wells. Vending machines for good karma..."). We caught up with Apatow shortly after the show, where he talked to us about what it felt like to stand in the live-comedy spotlight after all these years, gave us a little taste of what to expect in his upcoming movie, Funny People, and submitted to a round of Desert Island DVDs that you might find surprising. It's after the jump.DEFAMER: Congratulations on what we'd call a very successful return to your stand-up roots. What spurred this on? Was it research for Funny People, or did Funny People come out of a desire to revisit the world of stand-up? APATOW: I figured if I was going to make a movie about stand-up comedy I, unfortunately, needed to start doing it again. Mainly, because I have to start writing jokes for the stand up sequences in the movie, but also so I can remind myself how it makes you feel great and like crap, almost simultaneously. DEFAMER: Is that how it feels? APATOW: You get a high, but I always feel ashamed afterwards. Embarrassed about what I said. Embarrassed about the ego it takes to think anyone would want to listen to you talk. The instant need to do it again. It's like comic crack. DEFAMER: So Funny People is going to be like Punchline, only with Seth Rogen in the Sally Field role? APATOW: The movie isn't about stand-up comedy. It's about a few characters who are having a crisis, but what makes it different is that they are people who make comedy. DEFAMER: Your willingness to collaborate and promote lesser-known talents is probably one of the first things people think of when they think of the "Apatow" brand: You're not just getting one vision, your getting a bunch of complimentary sensibilities. APATOW: It was an easy show for me because I knew that no matter how well or badly I did, I had Seth Rogen, Charlene Yi, Million Dollar Strong, Craig Robinson, Bill Hader and Russell Brand coming on after me. No matter what the show would be fun. The idea was to put on a show that starred all of the people who have acted in our films. So many of them are great comics so it made for a great, raucous show. DEFAMER: Now onto the hardballs: You're stranded on a desert island with no one but a naked Jason Segel. Miraculously, you happen to have your three favorite L.A. takeout meals, and five favorite movies or TV series on DVD (excluding your own) with you. What are they? APATOW: My five DVDs would be Mad Men, Season Three of The Wire, Broadcast News, Being There, and Punch Drunk Love. My three take-out meals would be PF Changs, Vitorrio’s Pizza, and A Votre Sante chicken and asparagus—so I don’t feel unhealthy. DEFAMER: Seth Rogen did a bit in his act about being considered a bear by the gay community, and how he wished there was a straight equivalent. Have you ever been pegged as a bear? Ever thought about making the first mainstream bear comedy—or, failing that, a movie with a prominent gay character? APATOW: I almost wrote a movie which was about gay characters but I ultimately realized I didn’t know enough about the subject. That may have been the moment when I first realized I had heterosexual tendencies. DEFAMER: And finally, what can you tell us about this mysterious Sacha Baron Cohen project about Sherlock Holmes that you're producing? APATOW: Sherlock Holmes is being written by Etan Cohen, one of the writers of Tropic Thunder. DEFAMER: Hmm. Mysterious. Thanks, Judd!

We return you now to the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal—a city reinvigorated by a strengthened Canadian dollar and the recent grand opening of The Celine Dion Jumpsuit and Chapeau Museum. Hours ago, comedy tycoon (we promised we wouldn't call him a monopolist) Judd Apatow picked up a handsome companion trophy to sit alongside his Flackie and prized collection of custom penis-molds of every actor he's ever worked with: The prestigious Just For Laughs First Annual Comedy Person of the Year award.

Judd Apatow is the first to admit that he makes "dick movies with heart," and his latest project is no exception. It's a relationship saga set in the world of stand-up comedy, and as he explains, "It's not a big high-concept movie. It's hopefully going to be a very, very funny drama."

Hollywood's power list got a little more diffuse Monday when Diablo Cody, Marion Cotillard, Judd Apatow and Sacha Baron Cohen were among 105 new invitees to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The number is the lowest since 2004, when the Academy instituted its "Riff-Raff Rule" limiting the annual invitee total to 137; that said, we're not sure what kind of internal politics and/or pledge drives would necessitate inviting Michael Haneke and Jet Li to assume even 1/6000th of the Oscar vote. Follow the jump for more of this year's celebrated AMPAS Cub Club!

Judd Apatow's comedy-godfather status isn't quite translating overseas, The New York Times noted in a probing piece on Sunday. While the filmmaker-producer looks set for a late-summer spike in the States with the upcoming Step Brothers and Pineapple Express, his signature blend of pop-culture refraction and infantile male bonding has come to symbolize American cinema's rut in Europe and Asia. For disappointing starters, we hear France and South Korea have developed interests of their own outside our sex-and-drug romps, piling panic on top of panic as the dollar crashes and the world turns its back on Genius:

James Franco, star of the upcoming Pineapple Express, made a face after smelling something akin to rotten eggs at the Art Party at the Whitney Museum. However, he was quick to deny that he had any responsibility for the overpowering odor. Franco said, "That was not me, man. Don't place the blame on me. I know that you're looking at me like I did it, but nope. Not me." Franco was unable to come up with a source of the foul stench, but did point a finger in the direction of the media outlets at the event.

Comedy-video startup FunnyorDie, a project cofounded by yuksters Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy with Sequoia Capital's Mark Kvamme, has sold an equity stake to HBO of less than 10 percent. (FunnyorDie was valued at $100 million after the last round of funding; the new valuation, and HBO's exact investment, wasn't disclosed — if you know, please tell us.) In exchange, HBO also gets five hours of programming from Ferrell, McKay, Henchy and recent addition Judd Apatow.

Like it or not, nerd-turned-comedy-mogul Judd Apatow has tapped the fleshy center of the zeitgeist once again by unleashing Jason Segel’s manhood unto the world. And now, it looks like there’s a very hard hardcover release to look forward to in which Hollywood’s most legendary male assets are celebrated and outed — and we’re not talking shockers like Milton Berle. Among the nuggets revealed in Hollywood Babylon: It’s Back include the actor that's been called “donkey’d” by his female co-stars, the 1950s poster boy’s package was well-known in the prepubescent boy community, and who once posed nude for artists, earning himself the whisper, “It was the biggest I've ever seen. It made me drop my charcoal pencil.”

Another day, another reason to adore Cougar Queen Susan Sarandon. Sure, these quasi-shocking revelations about one of Hollywood's most respected actresses are intelligently being released just as her next film Speed Racer guns for a second place B.O. finish, but if we thought the 61-year old's new tattoo was cause for celebration, consider her recent discussion involving How To Talk To Your Kids About Drugs:

It's official: the world-saving baby-making duo of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are no longer mere entertainers. They are "heroes and pioneers." At least according to the categorical rankings of Time's 100 Most Influential List released today. And not only are they the most influential heroes, they're apparently more influential than Oprah Winfrey. And Tony Blair. In any case, among the "artists and entertainers," the mag happily ranks Lorne Michaels and Robert Downey Jr. high above icky Suze Orman and preachy George Clooney, but we do take issue with several other entries, after the jump.

"The appearance of Jason Segel's genitalia in the romcom Forgetting Sarah Marshall had American critics crowing about how the film has courageously broken one of the last taboos in mainstream cinema. Yet Segel's flaccid member looks pathetic and laughable, especially because it's attached to a body that is doughy and pallid. It can't seriously be accused of being capable of anything, let alone of breaking a taboo. So obviously devoid of sexual intent, it symbolises not so much his character's abject emotional condition at his girlfriend's rejection of him, but the sorry state of masculinity in American movies today." The Times of London's Christopher Goodwin goes on to piss and moan about how actors such as Seth Rogen, Michael Cera and Jonah Hill have replaced the manly men of yore-and conveniently dodges a crucial and trend-piece-killing point.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall star Jonah Hill's initial baby steps into a regular work out routine were thwarted by a nosy photographer. Hill politely asked if the photographer could leave him alone, seeing as how Hill had successfully finished his first block. Unfortunately for all parties involved, the photographer said no and offered Hill the halfway melted Snickers bar in his SUV. Hill continued on his walk, but the ever-persistent photog asked if Hill wanted to make a run to Crumbs in Beverly Hills, adding in that it would be his treat. Hill sighed and continued on with his power walk, then muttered, "Any other day, I'd be there. But you know, I'm working hard not to be the Artie Lange of the Apatow gang."

If you observe Judd Apatow's pervy rom-com assembly line with even casual frequency, you probably don't need a Wikipedia entry to remind you how accusations of sexism and misogyny have plagued the writer-producer-director over the years. At least we hope you don't, because an eagle-eyed Defamer reader points out this morning how a loyal defender / relative / Universal publicist has spent the better part of the last week expunging the dirty little non-secret from the Wiki record. From Katherine Heigl to Mike White, follow the jump for a few of the latest line edits.