We've made no secret of our love for Hollywood power lists, as hierarchical inventories of which players are currently swinging the biggest dicks (and that doesn't exclude the ladies who occasionally creep into the rankings!) in the entertainment industry briefly bring order to an otherwise confusing show-business world. In a twist that threatens to redefine everything we thought we knew about putting numbers next to famous names, the iconoclasts at EW have decided to substitute "smart" for the vanilla, outdated notion of "power," a decision that has catapulted burgeoning comedy monopolist Judd Apatow from an already-impressive #13 on Premiere's old-timey 2007 index to the top spot in Hollywood's New Smart Order.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often! Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you spotted inner-monologue-addicted serial killer Dexter and his completely clueless sister munching on tortilla chips at Marix.

Premiere, the magazine which earlier this year shuffled off its glossy coil and moved on to afterlife on the internets, has just released its annual Power List-, helpfully establishing a hierarchy that will inform which Hollywood asses will be kissed with renewed vigor for about the next 48 hours. (Unless some other publication spits out a differing set of rankings before the weekend, crippling sycophants with indecision over where their congratulatory muffin baskets should be delivered.)

· The trades discuss yesterday's big strike news that's allowing Hollywood its first glimmer of hope that a walkout might be avoided. (Please, no one say anything about the internet and digital downloads and ruin the town's brief buzz.) Also, THR unveils its stunning, strike-related news logo (at left). [THR, Variety]
· You know who hasn't had an unfunny family sitcom for far too long? Damon Wayans! Don't worry, ABC is busy filling this gaping hole in its primetime lineup. [THR]

Sweating into his fluffball of jewfro, a heavyset, facially-hairy young man with glasses stepped to the microphone during the Q&A portion of the New Yorker festival event featuring film critic David Denby in conversation with writer-director Judd Apatow and his protege Seth Rogen. Seth called on him to begin speaking: "Yes, me?" This joke got the second-biggest laugh of the night. But it had some stiff competition.

This is a column by one of the authors of The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life, who is still, unbelievably, still at Yaddo, which he has taken to calling "Yads."

Judd Apatow on former roomie Adam Sandler's insistence on getting a peek at the future Lil' Mayor of Comedy: "'When we first moved in together, very early on he said, "Let me see your penis." I was like, "No! What do you want to see that for?" He's like, "I just want to know what I'm dealing with." He wasn't embarrassed about it... He would tell other people "Judd won't show me it, he won't show me it."

From the Well, Damn, We Certainly Didn't See This One Coming file, the LAT is reporting that Judd Apatow Comedy Conglomerate senior associate Seth Rogen, who so memorably gave hope to bong-hitting slackers everywhere by impregnating an inebriated Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up, has signed a deal to write—and, weirdly, possibly star in—a Green Hornet movie for Columbia. Some background on the character and a brief history of previous attempts from the Times story:

As invigorating as an hourlong, cold Monday morning shower following two sleepless days of binge drinking, your weekend box office numbers:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and tell everyone about the time you spotted the cutie-pie accidental teen-killer of your dreams eating Chinese food one table away from you.

· Despite Fox's attempts to boost the struggling On the Lot's fortunes by editing the show into a more compact, once-a-week, we-will-give-five-dollars-to-anyone- who-can-explain-what-the-fuck- is-going-on-at-any-given-moment format, the show draws just 3.1 million viewers in what we assume will be one of its last airings. We did, however, enjoy Michael Bay's guest judge appearance, during which he repeatedly shared his moviemaking philosophy of "get a good editor and cinematographer and they'll cover for your lack of talent," then seemed barely able to restrain himself from hitting on the director of his favorite film. [THR]
· Shadowy Hollywood Foreign Press puppetmaster Phillip Berk is replaced by five-time president Jorge Camara, who assumes the important tasks of coordinating his organization's locust-like decimation of the industry's free buffets and the handing out of meaningless awards to shitfaced actors. [Variety]
· The Agent Dance Mini Edition: UTA poaches agent Sarah Clossey from Paradigm, potentially absorbing a middling client list that includes Amanda Peet's Shouty NBS Boss and The One Jim Could Never Love As Much As Pam. [THR]
· Peter O'Toole joins the cast of Showtime's The Tudors for seven episodes as Pope Paul III, a performance that's preemptively been nominated for an Emmy. [Variety]
· Judd Apatow Comedy HegemonyWatch: The Apatow-produced, Seth Rogen-starring Pineapple Express is given a summer '08 release date following the success of Knocked Up. [Variety]

Canadian sues Judd Apatow, claiming he ripped off her 2005 book, Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother to Be. [Radar]

All too often in Hollywood, the price of success is finding oneself named on a lawsuit by an aggrieved individual who feels that his or her own hard work on a story about, say, the dehumanizing effects of suburban Christmas-lighting competitions or about the so-deep-undercover-we-don't-know-which-way-is-up adventures of whitefaced African-American FBI agents has been unfairly appropriated by a studio hellbent on enriching themselves with ill-gotten material. According to a CBC report, Knocked Up's Judd Apatow could soon find himself sued by a Canadian journalist who feels that her personal tale of an unplanned pregnancy (detailed in the book Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-be—a match!) was too closely mimicked by Seth Rogen's wacky, yet human-condition-illuminating, insemination of Katherine Heigl:

· Local comedy monopolist Judd Apatow continues to integrate the industry's mirth-making entities into his rapidly expanding humor-producing conglomerate, collaborating with Jack Black, Knocked Up's Harold Ramis, Superbad's Michael Cera, and an Office writing team on Year One for Columbia. [Variety]
· The dust is finally starting to settle at a post-Albrechtgate HBO, with "longtime Albrecht right-hand man" Michael Lombardo reportedly being promoted to a new job overseeing all west coast operations. [THR]
· Jim Carrey will star in the dark comedy I Love You Phillip Morris (by Bad Santa's Glenn Ficarra and John Requa), an idea pitched as Catch Me if You Can meets Brokeback Mountain. There is no direct Judd Apatow involvement that we can discern, a fact that could doom the promising project to eventual turnaround. [Variety]
· Imagine superproducer Brian Grazer's unparalleled Bacon-attaching skills lead to ubiquitous actor Kevin joining the cast of Frost/Nixon, the big-screen adaptation of the Peter Morgan play. [THR]
· The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals throws out the FCC's "capricious" rulings against Fox over Cher saying "fuck" and Nicole Richie "shit" during broadcasts of the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards, a landmark decision that reaffirms an awards show presenter's right to "accidentally" swear on live TV. [Variety]

· These people and movies will be in the mix at Cannes this year: Martin Scorsese, The Golden Compass, the Coen Brothers, U2. Get excited for all the fun stuff your boss is gonna get to do in France! [Variety]
· Judd Apatow is getting into the David Krumholtz business in a big way, signing up the actor to write and star in Attorneys at Raw and to co-star in Jake Kasdan's musical biopic spoof Walk Hard. [THR]
· This year's Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Spiderman 3 is shaping up to be even bigger n' crasser than last year's M:i:III Tom Cruise city-crossing, multivehicle stuntacular, with simultaneous screenings in all five boroughs and a marching band angering residents of Peter Parker's Queens neighborhood. [Variety]
· An average of 25 million viewers tune in to watch the the hot one with the legs and the bald one with the funny hats outlast the rocker chick whose name we can never remember on American Idol. (It should go without saying that Sanjaya was nowhere near elimination.) [THR]
· Dealing with Pirates 3's dad-snorting PR crisis will be among Buena Vista's Head Flack in Charge Dennis Rice's last acts at Disney, as he's been brainwashed and stolen away by Tom Cruise to trick the world into believing that United Artists is a real movie studio, and not just an elaborate front for producing training films for Celebrity Centre e-meter repairmen. [Variety]

Following a screening at the SXSW Film Festival, Variety is head-over-heels, ass-over-teakettle, fill-me-up-with-your-bastard-slacker-lovechild in lust with Knocked Up, Judd Apatow's probing exploration of what happens when individuals from different beauty castes violate societal norms by mistakenly procreating:

Scriptland, the LAT's weekly ode to Hollywood's nebbish, toiling underclass of screenwriters and the (progressively-hotter-the-more-successful-they-get) women who love them, turns their attentions to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. A comic riff on the tortured musician biopic genre—of the sort Spike Lee recently attached himself to—from longtime friends and collaborators Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow, Walk Hard stars John C. Reilly in the title role of the troubled, Buddy Holly-era rocker who probably would have been better off not having outlived the Day the Music Died. Kasdan described their process for creating the film's all-important soundtrack composed of "good songs that are funny within the context of the movie," amazingly without ever once uttering the words, "You know, like in Spinal Tap.":

In a guest column looking back at the Year in Comedy for MTV News, producing/writing/directing Comedy Mafia kingpin Judd Apatow digressively mentions a recent incident that had him pining for the simpler, less stab-happy days of his Talledega Nights location shoot in Charlotte:

Today's Variety reports that New Gay Mafia (remember, the "mirth-making," not David Geffen, kind!) dons Jimmy Miller and Eric Gold, who manage seemingly every comedy star in Hollywood, are splitting up their management/production company. As with any divorce, we are concerned primarily with the fate of the children of their longtime union, custody of whom will be divvied up thusly:

40 Year-Old Virgin director Judd Apatow is keeping a diary on Slate this week, where he's been killing some downtime while producing the upcoming Will Ferrell NASCAR comedy in North Carolina by holding forth on such varied topics as the usefulness of Barney in the rearing of young children, Being Bobby Brown, and today, The Aging Comedy Writer Workout: