· "Were you planning to do a spoof or a parody of The Third Man?" Yeah, the Q&A portion of a NY DGA screening of The Good German probably could have gone a little more smoothly for Steven Soderbergh. Don't they know he's pals with that lovable Clooney character?
Two people you don't care about, even in an ironic fashion, are no longer dating!
Britney Spears Flashes Privates, Gets Press: Yup, that's pretty much the way the exchange works, isn't it?
TVLand has complied a list of the 100 TV catchphrases your most annoying co-worker long ago ruined for you.
Lindsay Lohan put on her underwear before heading out to the Vine Street Lounge, a sure sign she had no expectation of being photographed that night.

The tabloids are awash in stories celebrating Britney Spears and Paris Hilton's incipient, apocalypse-beckoning BFF-dom, an unholy marriage of convenience sure to draw the entire city of Los Angeles into a celebutard-generated black hole so powerful that not even Lindsay Lohan's pneumatic chest can escape its pull. An operative lucky enough to patronize the same drinking establishment as the temporarily inseparable duo files this report of their bathroom-hogging antics of last night:

We're not entirely sure what to make of a pair of photos that popped up on D-Listed today, supposedly depicting this year's Thanksgiving festivities at Shar Jackson's house, where ex-husband and round one babydaddy Kevin Federline allegedly showed up with a buxom, root-challenged blonde on his arm. Leaving room for the possibility that these pictures were from some Turkey Day past, and the mystery woman merely an au pair with a history of chronic back problems, we must admit that whoever she is, she seems impressively well integrated into the happy, abandoned family (save for one pouty, disaffected Eminem fan), and K-Fed has rarely been photographed looking quite so genuinely content as he does balancing an unidentified child, quite possibly of his own loins, on his shoulders, in a seasonal portrait that seems to embody the very spirit of his "Ladies look out...Fuck a wife, give me my kids, Bitch!" shower door Declaration of Pimp Independence.

Newly untethered pop strumpet Britney Spears has been easing her way back into Hollywood's daunting singles scene with none other than its queen ant, Paris Hilton, as her personal guide and mentor. After securely duct taping both of her children to a nursery room wall, Spears and Hilton hit the clubs for a weekend of debauched, mutually beneficial publicity at local, ultraexclusive celebriwhore broom closet Hyde. It was there that paparazzi caught Spears demonstrating her aptitude for such high-difficulty skank maneuvers as the Range Rover cigarette toss, while wisely choosing to ditch her white pompommed golf cap look for a decidely sluttier ensemble that all but seemed to scream, "Look at me, everyone! I have no panties, no visible genitalia, and, most of all, no regrets!" It should come as no surprise that Spears is such a quick study, however, particularly to anyone who has seen her junior high book report on Antigone, currently on the Christie's auction block. It's a near letter-perfect (she has some minor trouble with a sentence that begins, "Their was a roomer...") retelling of the Greek tragedy, ironically the story of a misunderstood and tortured girl, leery of undergarments and slavishly devoted to her family, who meets an untimely death after falling off the table upon which she was dancing to "Stars Are Blind."

TMZ breaks the disappointing news that we'd long feared, but secretly dreaded deep in the dark part of our soul which cries out for shaky, handheld footage of the sexual congress of multimillionaire pop-star and poorly chosen, fortune-frittering househusband: There is no Britney Spears and Kevin Federline sex tape. The former couple reportedly will release a joint statement to that effect, hoping to finally squelch the constant rumors of its existence that would have eventually driven its imaginary street value over the $1 billion mark, forcing Spears and Federline to seriously consider reuniting long enough to shoot one and fulfill the astronomical demand.

For those of you worried that the avalanche of publicity stemming from background dancing impresario Kevin Federline's public dumping by longtime bling-enabler Britney Spears might cause a spike in demand for his L.A. live shows (hey, some of you might have incapacitating Glade-huffing habits that would allow you to think such a thing), this report from a concertgoing operative should put your drug-addled mind at ease, revealing that House of Blues staffers couldn't even give away tickets to K-Fed's upcoming, Wednesday night show, even when resorting to chicanery:

In a stirring statement of personal empowerment combining the best elements of the Emancipation Proclamation, "I Will Survive," and the distilled sentiments of Snoop Dogg's most poignant couplets, Us Weekly reports that soon-to-be Britney Spears ex-househusband Kevin Federline wiped away the tears from his world-shattering discovery that the wife who had patiently enabled the elevation of both his kick and watch games to levels of ridiculousness utterly unreachable by lesser background dancers was divorcing him, grabbed a Sharpie, and defiantly scrawled the following message on a dressing room mirror backstage at his recent Chicago House of Blues show:

At this rate, the tabloid-inflated potential price of Britney Spears' sex tape should reach $350 million by the end of the week. And it will be worth every penny if we actually see K-Fed and Brit-Brit getting frustrated by their inability to remember which chess pieces "go all diagonal, y'all," sweeping them off the board, and then getting back to the monkeysex.
We imagine it does not surprise you in the least that the ways in which four-legged thespians can break into the business are virtually the same as those available to their bipedal, human counterparts.
Variety launches The Knife, a blog about the places where the entertainment industry likes to eat, leading off with today's report on Mozza, the Mario Batali restaurant that promises to be clogged with obnoxious power-eaters for months to come. There's also a post about Owen Wilson's shitty waiting skills.
Katie Holmes is in Rome! Cruise is seen leaving his hotel! Maybe this thing is going to happen after all.
· Our porny, pervtastic sister site Fleshbot is tricking its readers into taking their clothes off. Our personal ethics forbid us from trying to pull the same scam on you, but feel free to participate in their dirty game. [link NSFW]

According to this Fox News clip, Britain's News of the World (which, like Fox, is owned by NewsCorp, which we guess makes this more of an 'ad' than a news story), has offered K-Fed $50 million for a "four hour" tape of him playing chess with — oh, and boning — Britney on their honeymoon. Watch for more explainy-talk from the newsbots, plus some vintage Plastic Jumpsuit Tour stock footage.

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FindLaw's Julie Hilden, the same columnist who once eloquently argued that Tom Cruise suing South Park for insinuating that he's gay would be as nonsensical as Michael Jackson suing Rolling Stone for claiming that he's black (or something to that effect), now takes a look at the recent matter of Britney Spears vs. Us Weekly. As you may recall, the newly unencumbered pop star had sued the glossy weekly for reporting that she and former joint-bank-account-depletionist Kevin Federline had made a sex tape and "acted goofy" when the subject of its leak came up in her lawyers' presence. An L.A. judge then dismissed the case, writing in her decision that "the plaintiff has publicly portrayed herself in a sexual way in her performances." But as Hilden explains, that ruling virtually ignores the stronger half of the defamation suit—the "goofy" half:

Watch as Federline explains his mad skills at luring ho's with nothing more than a few "culinary lessons" and a properly seasoned tomato soup. Listen as he describes the super power he most covets ("strength"), and what he would do were he granted said power ("fly"). Learn that K-Fed is actually "an interesting dude" who just hasn't figured out how to make "millions of dollars" off his own name. Clearly, the exhausted rodent spinning the tiny wheel in his brain had been working overtime that night, cooking up worst case scenario contingency plans should the unthinkable come to pass.

You'd think that during the fifteen minutes in which Kevin Federline enjoyed enough leverage to make any kind of backstage demands for his predictably underattended live performances, he'd at least try and see if he could send venues scrambling to find "Five (5) bitches of various ethnicities, drenched in baby oil" and a "One (1) Sub Zero refrigerator, equipped to dispense Cristal from its drinking water apparatus" for his appearances. The Smoking Gun, however, has revealed the surprisingly modest ridiculousness of his concert rider game, which makes requests for the expected cans of Red Bull, bottles of Jack Daniels and Grey Goose, and in what must be seen as a conscious attempt to establish a snack food identity distinct from that of his Cheeto-guzzling, soon-to-be ex-wife, bags of Doritos and BBQ chips. Perhaps the most interesting item on the list is the pair of aromatherapy candles, which we imagine are an indispensable part of his pre-performance preparation: their calming scents help him temporarily achieve a sense of happiness and well-being that will be shattered the moment he steps on stage and is quickly enveloped by the boos (or at best, ironic cheers) of a sparsely populated auditorium.

Blogger Sarah DiMuro's reign of Janemag.com ickiness ("read up to see if Sarah's still a virgin!") is, in theory at least, over: she was supposed to to lose it before she hit 30, and she didn't. But that's not stopping her from taking her internet "fame" to the next level. Specifically: the 'giving dumb quotes to Page Six' level (Page Six, being Page Six, repays the favor by misspelling SaraH's name). Anyway, Sarah offers Britney Spears this counsel: "Don't date for a while, just take a breather and stay away from men. It's a no-brainer!" Well, okay, it's not bad advice. But we're still questioning Sarah's qualification to dish it out. Maybe Brit will counter with some fashion hints.

What, did you think "floppy toboggan" was some kind of sexual euphemism? Sicko. Observe: Three days in New York, and three (at least) instances of Britney Spears wearing the floppy toboggan of triumph. Kevin Federline may be the master of the Homburg (if not the Trilby), but his days of romping with this toboggan are finally over.

Kevin Federline took to the stage of Chicago's House of Blues last night as scheduled, just a day after being informed by text message that his studding and couch-warming services would no longer be required at the Spears Malibu compound. Playing to a packed house composed of a sprinkling of actual "fans" (of ironic pop culture appreciation in general), interspersed among hundreds more who accepted the last minute offer of free tickets in exchange for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of being able to point and laugh in person at the lone pimp on his day of curbside reckoning, Federline was quick to let the honeys in the crowd know that he was immediately available to be theirs for the taking:

Apparently there's someone in Britney's camp who actually has a brain cell — not whoever's in charge of making sure she has clothes on, obvs, but that'd be asking for a miracle:

We knew that by outsourcing our Britney Spears & K-Fed Sex Tape authentication needs to the cutting-edge porn-analysis lab over at sister site Fleshbot, we'd eventually get a reliable verdict about whether what we witnessed (over and over again, in the name of serious-minded research) was a loving video diary entry depicting one of the most intimate moments between an orally generous pop-star and her layabout, trucker-hatted househusband, or just a well-timed ruse meant to take advantage of yesterday's headline-grabbing divorce news. Unfortunately, Fleshbot has tracked down the source footage and come to the conclusion that the clip is a fake that preyed on our willingness to believe that a Spears-Federline sex tape could possibly be released into the world without K-Fed's official—and proud—profit participation. For a second straight day, the star-crossed couple has brought us nothing but unfathomable sadness. Would it have killed them to give us this small thing? No, it would not have.

Showing an admirable dedication to making sure that every possible angle in the Britney Spears divorce story is covered, Extra trekked all the way to the hinterlands of Fresno to interview—and we really hate to use the expression "we shit you not," but we really, really shit you not—the guy who owns the background dancing studio where the Artist Who Would One Day Be Known As K-Fed honed the Roger Rabbit and Running Man skills that would later propel him to international, pop-star-impregnating fame. This K-Pal helpfully confirms that Federline didn't hear he was dumped from Spears herself, and as any true friend would, pretends to believe that his fledgling music career can withstand the trauma of being separated from the reason he's famous in the first place. Unfortunately, investigative reporter Jerry Penacoli didn't think to ask Johnson to opine specifically on whether his longtime buddy would be able to maintain an acceptable level of ridiculousness in his watch and kick games in light of this profound personal setback.