Star far from the multiplex, as studios toss their unwanted cinematic kittens in a burlap sack and quietly drown them in the Olympic-sized pool of Oscar weekend obscurity.

Disappointed that our ACME mail-order Graydon Carter costume doesn't look anything like the catalog picture and will be woefully insufficient to crash the Vanity Fair party, and lacking the funds to buy even one of the five-star croutons at Elton John's charity viewing party, we've decided to crash out on the sofa to watch the Oscars with some pals who haven't quite conquered their drinking problems. In between booze refills and restorative handfuls of Ritalin, we're going to attempt to liveblog the telecast. Yup, all four-plus hours of it, come hell, high water, a hospital trip for alcohol poisoning, or an Apocalypse-inducing Don Cheadle win. So stop in and check out our inebriated ramblings about Hollywood's Biggest Night™ throughout the evening. Who knows, we may crumble under the pressure of this endurance test and you may witness the internet's first Oscar liveblogging suicide.

· Iraq war documentary Gunner Palace wins an appeal with the MPAA, earns the title of Most. Profane. PG-13. Movie. Ever. [Variety]
· Everyone works during pilot season, part 100: Tiffani "Don't call me Amber" Thiessen is cast in CBS sitcom pilot Stroller Wars. [THR]
· HBO moves Six Feet Under to Monday nights just to watch broadcast network execs shit their pants. [Variety]
· Poker no longer red hot: Debra Messing joins Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana in the Curtis Hanson poker flick Lucky You. [THR]
· Just in time to sustain the industry's feel-good vibe from the Oscars, the MPAA announces more lawsuits against movie downloaders and file sharers. This might just be a rumor, but we've heard that Dan Glickman is going to castrate one of the pirates right after the "Recently Dead" montage in the Oscar telecast, then feed his balls to a ceremonial MGM lion. [Variety]

We hope that former superagent/Disney president-for-a-day Michael Ovitz hasn't packed away his nicest court suits, because he's being sued by a former pal and business partner Ron Burkle over some failed dot-coms. When billionaires sue mere hundred-millionaires over amounts equal to their Aspen ski chalet decorating budgets, things are guaranteed to get nasty:

We don't know where a supposedly "hacked" Sidekick sex tape of rap-rock afterthought Fred Durst came from, or whether it has anything to do with Sidekicks (as alleged), hacks, or Paris Hilton Sidekick hacks (it probably doesn't), but we know this: If we could, we'd uninvent the internet if it would put this particular genie back in the proverbial genie container, just so we would never have had to hear Durst urge his partner to "touch my balls and my ass," or to see the resulting reacharound*. Or Durst's "O" face (pictured). These psychic scars will never fade.

Looming awards-show responsibilities be damned, Oscar producer Gil Cates keeps churning out blog posts. Our favorite part is always the little picture of Cates prominently featuring a laptop (today, Cates types!) that may or may not be gutted like an Ikea desktop prop, making the connection between "computers" and "blogging" for his less tech-savvy readers. This time, Cates reaches out to those who somehow might have missed the barrage of media coverage for the Oscars, i.e., coma patients, babies born without any senses, and people on the dark side of the moon with shitty satellite reception:

It took us days to finally push thoughts of Marcia Cross, Teri Hatcher, and Eva Longoria wrapped in the ultimate Desperate Housewives subplot (not to get too graphic here, but it involved a borrowed cup of flour, a Costco-sized tub of baby oil, and tiny-to-the-point-of-impracticality aprons), but then we got this glimpse of the Advocate cover that had originally kicked off the rumor binge, and we're forced to ponder Cross's sexual preference anew. Moving at the speed of magazine-light (and, we suspect, cheating by using a time machine), the Advocate has managed to splash a story about the rumor about Cross coming out in their pages on the cover of the very same issue that supposedly contained the story that spawned the rumor. Yes, we have a headache. And please, don't even consider the possibility that a savvy viral marketer from the Advocate planted the original rumor at the Data Lounge, lest your brain leak out of your ear.

· Finding a love interest for Will Smith in Hitch wasn't easy: Go black, and the Euro's won't buy tickets; go white, and red staters would burn down the multiplex or propose some kind of constitutional amendment. Apparently, Eva Mendes was exactly the right shade, since the constitution seems to be relatively intact.
· Note to Michael Lohan: Comparing yourself to OJ Simpson might help you sell your reality show to Fox (threatening murder really is the final frontier), but it probably won't help in court.
· Demi Moore as Summer's stepmom on The OC? TVGasm makes good use of IMDb.
· "Ultra-Orthodox Jews" aren't thrilled by Natalie Portman's movie makeout session. Join the club. We weren't thrilled that they edited all of her nude scenes out of Closer.

Forgive us, Lord, for it is late in the day and we are so very, very weak. And realize that we are trying, for we spent the last ten minutes debating whether or not to go with the title above or, "Whoa! I know reverse peristalsis."

· Help Beck raise money so that the International Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance can buy e-meters and acting lessons sacks of rice for tsunami orphans, as everyone's favorite pop-lockin' folk-rocker plays the Henry Fonda Theatre.
· The Aero Theatre hosts a free screening of Valmont, a “stingingly sharp and tragically poignant” (and Malkovich/Thurman-free) adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
· A short listing of selected local concerts, separated by semicolons: Joanna Newsome at the Troubadour; Irving at Spaceland; Earlimart at Silverlake Lounge, where they're apparently having their mail forwarded now.

Gigi Levangie Grazer, screenwriter, novelist, and Hollywood war bride of Imagine's Brian Grazer, offers the Rocky Mountain News a helpful guide to the intensive, potentially year-long beauty regimen that should be undertaken by any Oscar-quality arm candy worth the limo ride. A taste:

We've only been following Oscar producer Gil Cates' behind-the-scenes blog musings for a couple of days now, but we're going to sorely miss his company come Monday morning. We fear he's going to abandon his online presence after the awards are over and return to his normal, daily activities, which we assume consists of chasing butterflies with an oversized net and trying to catch rainbows in a marmalade jar. Please take a moment to savor what will be one of his last dispatches before the Big Night steals him away from us:

In the interest of reclaiming Defamer's inbox from the unprecedented deluge of completely unimpressed, nearly-unanimous responses, it's time to get to your blind item guesses. Hook up again with One Tanked Titty Blind Vice:

In a development so meta that it threatens to tear the very fabric of the celebutante-blogging continuum and suck all of Los Angeles into the darkest recesses of Tara Reid's reproductive system, several readers have pointed out that a Defamer post had appeared in Paris Hilton's hacked Sidekick e-mail—and, just to make sure that the heavens split and the Creator himself vomits lightning of disapproval from his Godhead, the post in question was an account of Hilton in a T-Mobile store after her Sidekick was stolen. We know, it's a lot to wrap your head around; the strain of trying to work out all the angles has left us unable to speak without a stutter for the last fifteen minutes. And forgive us for even calling attention to this story, but we haven't basked in this kind of reflected glory since we used our cameraphone to snap a picture of our manhood as mirrored by the side of a highly polished toaster.

We know this is probably just a crazy dream, but wouldn't it be fun if Disney started handing out the assault rifles before they fire half the company? It would help manage the coming overcrowding problem in the LA office, and one of the Weinsteins might catch a bullet in the ass on the way out the door.

· Jude Law "breaks" into Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering, "entering" our hearts in a role as the prettiest architect that the world has ever seen. [Variety]
· More proof that Quentin Tarantino would direct the parking of a Land Rover into a particularly tight space if the money was right: He'll devise a "special" story for and direct the season finale of CSI. [THR]
· When will agents learn that agenting is enough to feed their soul, and stop fleeing their bloodsucking coops in search of satisfaction that will never come? UTA partner David Schiff leaves to create his own multi-purpose entertainment company, the aptly named Schiff Co. [Variety]
· Shed a tear for multimedia behemoth Viacom, who've suffered an $18 billion loss this quarter. We're not sure how, but we're certain that future intergalactic despot Les Moonves is behind this, and the invasion is still nigh. Smuggle your children to Canada before they're assimilated. [THR]
· Having sufficiently ruined the professions of detective, gangster, and military officer (various ranks and branches), the bloated John Travolta tries to drive drag-queens to suicide by considering a turn as Hairspray matron Edna Turnblad. [Variety]

Wherein we invite our readers to unlearn everything they every thought they knew about the English language, fully surrender to the prose Rapture of humpy E! gossip savior Ted Casablanca, and guess the identity of his weekly blind item. Ted's back on his game after nearly boring the gossip collective unconscious into Jungian annihilation last week, offering up a tale of a starlet who's down for anything after a drink or twelve. Chug from the bottle of One Tanked Titty Blind Vice:

Breaking! Robert Evans gets out of bed!

Page Six has been tracking the whereabouts of obsolescent bimbot Traci Bingham, who's been turning up everywhere in Hollywood in a bazoom-enhancing t-shirt advertising an online poker concern. Finally, someone's figured out a way to make use of former Baywatch stars*! It always seemed such a waste to toss them in a landfill or abandon them in a hot tub until they dissolved, especially when it takes so long for the implants to biodegrade. Bingham's really dodged a bullet, however, because we still heartily recommend that anyone's who's ever had contact with Bill Maher's genitalia** should have their head shaved and be abandoned in the desert with half a day's water supply.

The LAT's Michael Hiltzik isn't swallowing Universal's publicity load about the $600 million figure that's been attached to Deep Throat's all-time gross, a number recently splashed around to promote their doc Inside Deep Throat. It's shocking to learn that mobsters, accountants from the dawn of the adult film industry, and studio publicity departments might not use "best practices" in regards to accurately reporting financial information: