It's not a very good week to be a Hollywood sibling, with the Russian roulette death of Scott Ruffalo followed soon afterward by Dakota Culkin's fatal encounter with a moving vehicle.

Sarah Jessica Parker making phone calls last night at a Barack Obama campaign center ... Macaulay Culkin standing on the sidewalk ... Katie Holmes and Suri wearing matching orange dresses in Central Park ... Philip Seymour Hoffman walking in the West Village ... Ashley Olsen and Paul Rudd posing outside the Letterman show ... Tyra Banks getting some frozen yogurt ... Lindsay Price carrying her dog on the set of Lipstick Jungle ... Keira Knightley walking with her boyfriend, Rupert Friend ... Becki Newton on the set of Ugly Betty ... and Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon outside a Halloween party at Marquee.

Former child star (and now author and indie actor) Macaulay Culkin is 28 today. Others celebrating today: Cassie, the pop star and occasional Diddy flame, is 22. Thalia, the Latin singer (and wife of Tommy Mottola) is 37. Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson is 42. Interior designer Lisa Jackson is 50. Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro is turning 73. Former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge is 63. And Times crossword editor Will Shortz is 56.

While waiting in line for a screening of Pineapple Express, famed siblings Macaulay and Kieran Culkin got into a very heated debate over the quality of their bottle water. Macaulay felt that while the water could've been a bit colder, it was still refreshing and satisfying. However, Kieran felt that water was bland and too predictable. Macaulay pointed to his brother towards the various brands of flavored water available at the theater, but Kieran just shook his head. A crowd quickly formed around the brothers who asked the brothers to debate more topics. One onlooker commented, "These two guys should be the guys replacing Ebert & Roeper. You can really tell that they don't like each other."

Just when we didn't think we could be muster interest in another dispatch from Cannes, along comes Spout's resourceful Karina Longworth with five words: "Macaulay Culkin group sex movie." Apparently Sex and Breakfast is among the hundreds of films screening at the Cannes market, featuring Culkin and Eliza Dushku (!) as a troubled Los Angeles couple consulting a sex therapist who prescribes open relationships to help liven things up. "After sex, I get this moment of clarity," Culkin says in closing, something he's likely pondered aloud before staring up a Peter Pan ceiling mural at Neverland Ranch. "Do you ever get that?"

Some people think that agents, executives and Anthony Pellicano are the most evil people in Hollywood. But watch Vh1's I Know My Kid's a Star for ten minutes and you'll see who the real villains are: Stage parents.

A former child star and Michael Jackson protégé, Culkin has been trying to shake his indelible Home Alone image with roles in edgy indie movies like Party Monster and Saved!

Macauley Culkin will star with Eliza Dushku in the dark comedy Sex and
Breakfast, which will attempt to coax edgy laughter from the disconnect of watching the Home Alone kid engage in group sex. [Variety]
Be prepared to excuse yourselves for some alone time after getting all worked up by these two sexy trade paper stories about multimedia conglomerate profit reports. [THR, THR ]
Seeking new and exciting ways of delivering episodes of The Hills to a cherished demographic, MTV is buying Y2M, the nation's largest network of online college newspapers. [Variety]
Sony and MGM move ahead with their Pink Panther sequel by hiring a writing team of "newcomers" whose work will eventually be undone by scores of uncredited rewrites. [THR]
Conservative CBS eschews the willy-nilly fall TV season premiere strategy of its crazy whippsnapper competitors, and will instead roll out new episodes of its various series in a single week. [Variety]

From a fullpage ad for Junior, Macaulay Culkin's new autobiographical novel, in Friday's Times:

Macaulay Culkin's much maligned first novel, Junior, hasn't exactly turned the literary establishment onto its ear, but according to an eyewitness report sent into our New York-hardened sister site, Gawker, a recent reading at Barnes Noble brought out a large, motley crew of fanatics in the truest sense of the word. ("A deaf woman who brought up a blown up picture of him...left in tears and hugged a security staffer.") Perhaps this explains how Culkin may have managed to crack the top 5,000 of Amazon's bestseller chart, who helpfully suggest it be paired with Margo Jefferson's 160-page rumination on all things Neverlandian, On Michael Jackson.

No matter what you do, say, or write about, you can't escape the glittery glove of the past.

Because we are far too in awe of the boy-beast that is Macaulay Culkin, we could not bring ourselves to attend his reading at Barnes & Noble last night. Thankfully, a reader willing to face Culkin's bright, shining star reports on the scene:

It's an exciting time for former Neverland Ranch VIP Macaulay Culkin. There are rumors he may be getting ready to marry for the second time, and that he is considering taking a spot on the next season of UK's Celebrity Big Brother. But it's his debut novel Junior, due this March, that is getting the most buzz. Its first critique, from Kirkus Reviews, came out today. Some highlights:

Cory's Web Log notes this truly unsettling resemblance, and we've lost the last five minutes staring blankly at the monitor, trying to think of something to say about it. Sometimes words can do no justice; the scores of tiny blood vessels in the brain breaking free simultaneously and the Pop Tart's jelly filling slowly dribbling down one's chin are enough.

· Tina Brown uses a word that's too big for the NY media community to understand. [Page Six]
· Submercer's "subversion" party features hotshot editors as DJs. Up next: Radar's Maer Roshan, Spin's Sia Michel, and Vanity Fair's Dana Brown. [Page Six]
· Macaulay Culkin had to teach Marilyn Manson how to smoke for his role in the Sundance film Party Monster. [Page Six]
· Page Six discovers Ken Courtney's controversial T-shirts. [Page Six]
· The Key West home of the recently-divorced Mr. & Mrs. Gerald Levin will be featured in an upcoming issue of Architectural Digest. [Cindy Adams]
· Sign in the Q3 bus to LaGuardia: "The driver reserves the right to kick your ass." [Cindy Adams]
· Robert Redford finds Britney Spears' Sundance invasion annoying. [Liz Smith]
· Paramount head Sherry Lansing is rumored to be the next head of the Carter Center; a movie about New York real estate heir turned transvestite fugitive is in the works; and model Angie Everhart has "fired everyone in her life" and is starting over. [NY Daily News]