The Crooks and Liars blog has a video clip of Matt Drudge's appearance on Hannity & Colmes last night, in which Drudge took his internet fixation on Chris Rock's comments that "only gays watch the Oscars" to the fair-and-balanced airwaves of Fox News. An excerpt is transcribed on the blog:

It's officially a trend: Billboards are becoming LA's dominant mode of self-expression. We'd gotten several e-mails about this yesterday (it sits above Third Street a couple of blocks west of The Grove), then found that someone at the LA Social Club Livejournal took a picture, saving us a pilgrimage to go snap it ourselves.

· Check out "Hearts Aflame: An Evening of Love and Hate Letters, 18th Century Missives to 21st Century E Mails" at the M Bar. Enjoy cocktails and dinner, an entertaining reading of the aforementioned missives and e-mails by actors like Joey Slotnick and Julie Warner, then retire to your bachelor pad for all the ass you can handle.
· Head out to CineSpace, where the cliché dinner and a movie becomes a little less clichéd at a screening of Casablanca. Here's looking at you, kid, looking up at yourself getting laid on the mirrored ceiling over your bed.
· Celebrate the holiday at the the Erotic Museum, where wine will be served amidst all things sex-related. If you and your date aren’t already doing it, you will be by the end of the night.
·' Follow dinner and drinks with a trip up to Mulholland Drive (but beware road closings) for some good, old fashioned "parking." Nostalgia is hot these days, and your companion might even think it’s romantic instead of a cynical play for a Valentine's Day hummer while overlooking our city's breathtaking vistas.

Those without a date on this most manufactured of Hallmark holidays can take heart, for American Idol's most perkily (or is it Percodin?) addled judge offers a surefire solution to the Valentine's blues:

As our eagle-eyed readers have told us time and time again, local Apple stores are a fish-in-a-barrel location for celebrity sightings. Today's Wired News has a story on Mac-obsessed actors running amok in Apple's shiny, white retail spaces, and they convinced some clerks to break the store's gag order to let us know which stars go apeshit when they can't get access to the magical celebrity inventory or the special millionaire's discount.

We hate to take you for a ride in the Paris Hilton Gossip Wayback Machine, but buried at the bottom (Paris dirt is painfully '04) of Fox News gossip columnist Roger Friedman's Grammy piece is the answer to one of the greatest Hilton-related "mysteries" of the past year:

Sunday's LAT profiled "Jay the Writer" (and yes, we realize that we're quoted in the story—obsessively Googling ourselves sometimes turns up nuggets unrelated to Linday Lohan's breasts), the adorably deluded, aspiring screenwriter who's spent "$75,000 to $100,000" trying to find out if renting billboard space near studios makes him seem like a genius of self-promotion or, in the words of one nameless agent, "retarded":

· The Aviator (not so fast, Martin Scorsese!) and Vera Drake take the top awards at the BAFTAs. What does this mean for The Aviator's chances at the Oscars? It's going to hurt even more when Million Dollar Baby keeps Scorsese winless. [Variety]
· No punchline necessary: Hayden Christensen signs on to star in The Decameron, opposite Mischa Barton. [THR]
· Eisner tells his shareholders that regardless of what the Weinsteins do, Miramax will remain at Disney. The Weinsteins, however, are still free to beat their employees at any new gig of their choosing. [Variety]
· "The WB's 10th-year pickup of 7th Heaven has put me into eighth heaven" says Aaron Spelling. He continues, "And I'm so happy, I've nearly forgotten that I sired the star of Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?" [THR]
· Golden Age of Antipiracy Report: Specially coded Oscar screener DVD-Rs can't be viewed in older players. The Academy will soon issue Betamax tapes and players to all members to remedy the issue. [Variety]

Jason Bateman hosted this weekend's SNL, where Lorne Michaels and the gang generously let him turn his monologue into a plea for people to watch the not-yet-canceled-but-probably-canceled Arrested Development. (They even lent him Amy Poehler, who's married to AD co-star Will Arnett, to help with the pitch so that the couple can keep things "good in the bedroom," a worthy cause if ever there was one. Surely America will want to help the lovable Arnett get some ass!) But Bateman has no illusions about the show's timeslot competition, the juggernaut Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: "Who's going to watch us when they can watch a hot, shirtless guy build a skate ramp for a kid with no bones?"

Miramax despot Harvey Weinstein needs to hire some writers, lest he become the bitch of anyone willing to offer a sound bite to a gossip columnist:

We're not exactly sure how this happened (every time a camera cut to Usher we reflexively flipped over to Desperate Housewives), but it seems that Jamie Foxx won nine Grammys last night. We were skeptical at first, thinking it had to be been some kind of mistake, but then we saw Foxx singing (that stupid tattoo on the back of his head gave him away) "Georgia On My Mind" with Alicia Keys. We knew Foxx did all of the singing in Ray! Leonardo DiCaprio stands no chance for Best Actor—unless he can pull off a better stunt. Keep your eyes peeled for Miramax's full-page ads in the trades promising that Leo will prove his acting chops by urinating in thirty milk bottles during the Oscars ceremony.

It's so nice to see that the Drudge Report didn't opt for a histrionic headline and instead chose to faithfully capture the tone of Oscar host Chris Rock's outrageous remarks in huge type. And an additional fist-bump to Drudge for not using the term "hip hop" to describe Rock, though we suspect he was too busy wiping the splooge off his keyboard to bother getting into the race thing.

Like a big box of chocolates left on your desk by a handsy co-worker, here are your Valetine's Day weekend box office numbers:

· Now that her babies are two-and-a-half months old, it's finally safe for Julia Roberts to begin selling tiny pieces of their souls to the celebrity glosses.
· Headline of the week, by a mile: Actor Tom Sizemore Fails Drug Test with Fake Penis
· Paris Hilton "resents" that Playboy put her on their cover when she doesn't appear naked inside. Oh, the moral outrage!
· Suddenly, our lives make sense: "In a study titled "Monkeys Pay Per View," neuroscientists at Duke University discovered that rhesus monkeys will give up a portion of hard-earned perks for a peek at pictures of the dominant leaders and nubile females in their troop. But they won't pony up to look at faces of subordinate simians." [via Wonkette]

Friday· We make no guarantees that if you attend the Barneys warehouse sale (which begins today and lasts until the 21st at the Barker Hanger at the Santa Monica Airport), you won't have your arm chewed off by someone else who wants the same pair of discounted shoes.
· Friday night music: Steve Earle and the Dukes at the Henry Fonda Theatre, Jonathan Richman at King King, Hidden Cameras at the Echo (with not-so-secret guest Beck opening?), and DJ ?uestlove at the Conga Room.
Saturday
· Reality is much funnier than anything we can dream up: The World Grilled Cheese-Eating Championship comes to Muscle Beach, with a special appearance by the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich. We shit you not.
· Also from the "we shit you not" file: Sweat with [sic] the oldies at Richard Simmons' Valentine Motivation and Aerobic Extravaganza at Slimmons, his Beverly Hills studio.
· Bright Eyes begins his 3-night stand at the Orpheum Theatre. Don your best Conor Oberst disguise and try to take home a lovelorn Winona Ryder!
Sunday
· You can probably safely skip watching the Grammys on CBS—no one you like is going to win anything—but you should probably monitor the internet to find out who won so you don't embarrass yourself at the parties. We won't have that problem unless Usher unexpectedly wanders into our kitchen.

Variety reports that copies of DisneyWar, which was rushed to market three weeks ahead of schedule, are flying off the shelves of west side bookstores:

Hot off of PRNewswire: Outgoing Paramount trailblazer Sherry Lansing is set to receive what will become the least-photographed slab of Chinese Theatre history since Steven Seagal's hands hit the wet cement:

With the end of their movie partnership looming, Pixar head Steve Jobs isn't going to take any smack-talk by Disney CEO Michael Eisner like a bitch. Watch out, Big Mike, this CGI kitten's got claws:

We'd like to pause and thank this week's sponsors, who've helped us turn our gig moonlighting as a bachelorette party stripper (think "very bad cop") into more of a hobby than something we need to do to eat two meals a day. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and reach the world's sexiest readers, see our ad info page.

A reader submits this account of Cameron Diaz's high-speed chase with paparazzi yesterday, which ended in the parking lot at MTV's offices: