We know pause to nod knowingly and appreciatively in the direction of this week's sponsors, without whom we'd probably be forced to roll Pat O'Brien's filthy phonecalls for a living. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and get all "jiggy" with the world's most "jiggable" consumers, see this page.

· Desperate Housewives, 24, and Lost have been successful overseas, thrilling international audiences in a way they haven't experienced since David Hasselhoff stapled a merkin to his chest and donned a red bathing suit. [Variety]
· While other media conglomerates look to get leaner and meaner through deconsolidation, Rupert Murdoch is happy to have his News Corp continue to bloat with further expansion. He's inching ever closer to his goal of having ten generations of heirs wipe themselves only with crisp hundred-dollar bills. (The help will use the wrinkled ones.) [THR]
· "Newsies converge on Vatican City." With a critical mass of priests gathering for the pope's funeral, the newsies don't want to see the altar boys getting all the action. [Variety]
· Summer is for remakes: The Pink Panther's release is moved to August 5th, where it will do battle with the similarly original Dukes of Hazzard flick.[Variety]
· George Clooney may join Cate Blanchett and his Section Eight producing partner Steven Soderbergh (who'll direct) to make The Good German, the story of "an American journalist who is sent to cover the Allied summit meeting that will carve out control of post-World War II Germany." If the deal is consummated, this will mark the fifth time that Clooney and Soderbergh have made beautiful love to each other across the camera. [THR]

Before you fill your studio development office or movie trailer with shouts of, "Ooh, ooh, a hooker! Some blow? No...two hookers dipped in blow!" this ad, currently in rotation on Variety's web page, is merely shaking down the singer's Hollywood pals for a donation to build wells in Africa. Too bad Bono's allied with the African Well Fund—if they were exploiting his name without permission, he could've sued them into oblivion to help pay down Third World debt.

In a story for MSNBC, Reality Blurred's Andy Dehnart describes Donald Trump's clumsy attempts to atone for his Apprentices' continuing retardation in marketing the products of his show's deep-pocketed sponsors. Last night's show featured an Apprentice staple, the hilariously obvious, mismatched voiceover, in which The Donald threw a compensatory bone to the latest advertiser to have its reality-integrated campaign bungled by the Little Trump Urban Achievers:

Hey, have you heard that there's a gang of obsessed Star Wars nerds camping out in front of the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd, even though there's a chance that the movie won't be premiering there? So has the LAT...four days after the story unfolding right under their nose first broke. But what the Times lacks in timeliness they attempt to make up in definitiveness, deftly leading their story with a serviceable FAQ of The Line:

As part of our somewhat semiregular series of early morning features meant to challenge, titillate, or vaguely nauseate our readers while they enjoy that first cup of coffee, we present this slice of a hard-hitting exchange between a fashion reporter for the Dallas Morning News and The OC's patio furniture-abusing, lesbian lite (TV only, people!) actress Mischa Barton (presumably) at a press junket for Keds, which Barton endorses.

· What's next, Oscar the Grouch going on Paxil? Are Ernie and Bert going to stop bathing together? Will Snufalapagus stop staring deeply into our eyes and cease delivering subliminal messages telling us it's OK to hit the mailman with a frying pan because he's secretly reading The New Yorker short story before we get to it? We fear all is lost.
· Is it just us, or is Wilmer Valderrama wearing clown shoes? If those shoes are full, that might explain many, many previously troubling things about his dating history. Also: The Glorious Ladies of Fug make us laugh.
· Nick and Jessica's tabloid troubles, now in Mad-Lib form. Yay for marital strife!
· Red Sox fans have something new to complain about: After this weekend, when Fever Pitch is released, they'll never know if someone in a Sox cap is a fan of David Ortiz or Drew Barrymore.

· Jane Fonda turns up at Book Soup to sign copies of her autobiography, My Life So Far, and answer all of your well-considered questions about Vietnam, three-ways, and what it was like to recently co-star with Jennifer Lopez's ass in the forthcoming Monster in Law.
· If you can find a buddy to hold your spot in front of The Line for Star Wars, you can audition for the Independent Film Channel’s Film Fanatic Challenge by just showing up at the Bonaventure Brewing Company downtown from today through Saturday. Come on, give it a shot, you'll still have a good forty days or so to model the hair shirt of fandom in front of the Chinese. [eighth item]
· Because it wouldn't be a To Do list without some specially-chosen concert listings: Hot Hot Heat do an in-store at Amoeba (free, unless you count the money you drop on used CDs); The Soundtrack of Our Lives play Swedish-flavored rock and roll at the Viper Room; a reader assures us that you will enjoy the Irish-y punk of The Dirges at Molly Malone's, Fairfax Avenue's home of Irish-y punk.

When you're scanning news feeds for stories and come across a headline like "Michael Jackson Had Oral Sex with Boy, Guard Says," the savvy media consumer tells himself, "Oh, here they go sensationalizing the child molestation trial of that millionaire pop-star with the bleached, plastic face and the Fortress of Solitude full of chimps and llamas again!" And as the savvy media consumers that we fancy ourselves to be, we read on:

Your guesses are in! Take a quick soak in the refreshing bubbles of One Luxurious Blind Vice before moving on:

On Monday, we noted that BET was graduating to the basic cable big-leagues by finally developing their own Apprentice knock-off hosted by hip-hop mogul Damon Dash. Today, sister site Gawker's heard some whispers that BET's flushing its news operation in favor of cutting-edge programming like Dash's project. Yes, yes, very sad that the news is going bye-bye, but we're not getting into that here (like NBC wouldn't have Brian Williams whacked if they thought Trump could read a Teleprompter?). More exciting to us is the new show's version of the elimination ritual, the most crucial facet of any competition-based reality show, where Dash will "snatch a special gold chain" from the neck of the losing contestant. This emasculating de-blinging is easily going to be worth the cancellation of a dozen news shows. Now they just need to come up with the accompanying catch phrase. We're partial to, "Suge Knight's waiting outside to murder you," but that could still use some punching up.

Admit it. For a second there, you thought that somebody finally scraped up the cash to buy William Morris.

Two reports of unchecked celebrity activity at last night's Staples Center U2 shows rolled in this morning. This time, some intrigue in the VIP-heavy front section of the concert: Why couldn't John Cusack get a backstage pass on his own? Are those Entourage kids (and Jeremy Piven) really there to shoot footage for the show, or were they engaged in some kind of semi-elaborate ruse to reach the rarefied air of the front row that their semi-celebrity alone would not allow them to breathe? Why does Jon Bon Jovi have such incredible skin, and why is Orlando Bloom draped in chicks? These issues and more addressed below:

· Film festival shocker: American-made movies will run roughshod over Cannes. [Variety]
· MTV announces the launch of its Overdrive web-only channel, finally servicing the needs of OCD-addled teens who need to see some rides pimped rightfuckingnow. [THR]
· OK, we're not kidding around anymore, MGM: Just pick a new fucking James Bond already, even if it's gotta be that British guy that no one here's ever heard of. It takes less time to pick a Pope, and he's got much cooler clothes. [Variety]
· Malcolm in the Middle nerd Frankie Muniz really stretches himself by signing up to play a computer geek in the teen horror flick Stay Alive. People really don't realize how hard that nerd-to-geek transition is for an actor. [THR]
· Maxim magazine, NBC, and Dimension Films enter into a mutually-beneficial, cross-promotional whoring arrangement. Coming soon: Jeff Zucker and Bob Weinstein tangled in a sweat-soaked, semi-clothed embrace on the cover of June's mag. [Variety]

Wherein we invite our readers to don their trash-turbans and play a dish-decoding tune on their flutes, and attempt to tease the celebrity cobra out of the wicker basket of blind items offered by humpy E! gossip swami Ted Casablanca. This week, Ted's back to the material that's elevated him to gossip greatness, an avowedly straight actor up to some same-sex antics. Charm the snake of One Luxurious Blind Vice:

Note to Mr. Gere: You may want to think twice before you try to slow-dance with the head of the PLO, lest you lose that "come hither" finger.

Taking a cue from the Oscar telecast visionaries who forced winners to enjoy the proudest moment of their lives while standing uncomfortably in the aisles of the audience like overdressed ushers or arrayed on stage like firing-squad fodder, the television academy has recommended similar, time-saving changes to their ratings-impaired Emmy show. Some winners will be urged to keep their speeches brief (choosing "thanks" over "thank you" will save half a second at least), while others will be asked to pre-tape the spontaneous outburst of joy that comes from basking in the highlight of their careers. Still, writers and directors turn the lemons of discontent into the lemonade of acquiescence:

Whichever skinny-armed, Vader-helmeted Lucas disciple decided to line up the band of Star Wars disciples in front of the "wrong" theater six weeks before the new movie's premiere has turned out to be some kind of publicity genius. Sure, they got some blog attention earlier in the week, but now the mainstream media is sniffing around, knowing that the headlines had already written themselves:

· Nicole Kidman is so greedy. What's wrong with the kids she has with Tom Cruise? The fact that Cruise could at any moment detonate the explosive implants the Scientologists installed in their heads if they ever leave the fold is no reason to make them feel like they're not enough for her.
· Sean Penn's so exhausted from shooting All the King's Men that he's going to take a couple of years off from Hollywood. During the hiatus, he'll lose entire days dreamily tracing the scar tissue where he carved Chris Rock's name on his stomach after the Oscars, wondering why everyone thinks he has no sense of humor.
· Fametracker mulls possible titles for Britney Spears' reality show on UPN. We have only one suggestion: Crabs.
· Say what now? Who?
·“I looked up ‘maverick’ in the etymological dictionary, and it basically was a kind of cattle that had been owned by somebody named Maverick that had not been branded. And so I believe the poetry of it is somebody that’s unbranded.” FilmStew talks to Crispin Glover.

· Tonight at Ivar, 10 actors risk humiliation and the instant obliteration of their promising careers as they compete in front of celebrity judges (including Andy Dick, Sarah Silverman, and some agent and studio types) in the Manhattan Monologue Slam. The winner is flown to New York to compete against the East Coast competition's winner, while the losers...well, let's just say they've all kissed their families goodbye before the event.
· Page Six says Orlando Bloom, Adrien Brody, Robert Downey Jr., Gina Gershon and Jeremy Piven will be at Forty Deuce tonight to launch the Bravo TV series (Forty Deuce, duh) tonight. So if the publicist who told them that turns out to be wrong, direct your hate mail directly to the Sixers.
· Author Michael Joseph Gross signs his book Starstuck at Book Soup, a memoir examining the relationship between fans and the celebrities they adore. Several celebrities will be on display in Lucite cages for better illustration of the book's principals. OK, not really, but we're sure a handful of 20s and a quick sweep through the lobby of the Standard could make it happen.