· Never underestimate the psychic wounds inflicted by Jersey Girl: Director Kevin Smith completely gives up and will deliver a Clerks sequel (from his screenplay, The Passion of the Clerks), to good buddy Harvey Weinstein at Miramax. Wouldn't it have been easier to just cut off all contact with Ben Affleck to deal with the flop-induced grief? [THR]
· Garfield: The Movie finishes first at the international box office, giving the world community still more fodder for hating America. [THR]
· Get me more Smits! We need more Smits, do you hear me?! You do? Oh, good. ABC signs up Jimmy Smits for an overall television deal and moves his production company over to Touchstone Television. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Movie studios foot the bill for the Governator's trip to the RNC. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Tom Cruise visits with the French Finance Minister to discuss Franco-American relations. Watch for the entire country to officially convert to Scientology by the end of the week, powerless against Cruise's billion-dollar smile. [THR]

While the DNC suctioned all of Hollywood's star power to Boston for a week, leaving us to flail in a void of Ben Affleck bleeding-heart sound bites and overheated reports on which actor was possibly bedding which Kerry daughter, the RNC should leave the local celebrity population largely intact. Page Six reports that third-tier Baldwin brother (and born-again Christian) Stephen has converted to the Bush/Cheney camp. That's a start, right? Of course, they've always got Vincent Gallo and his peculiar genius for drawing media attention. He's also proven that he's a student of film, so let's hope he grabs his camcorder and the Bush twins for a pretentious homage to Rob Lowe's groundbreaking documentary of the 1988 DNC.

Well played, evil, press-duping MTV overlords. You tricked us into watching the VMAs by floating a breathless "Britney's getting married, wink wink!" rumor. Well, she didn't get married, and as far as we can tell, she wasn't even present at the VMAs. (Take that statement for what it's worth; we did a shot of Grey Goose each time someone at the show declared something "hott." After ten minutes, we were certain that we could discern between the "two-t" and elusive "three-t" permutations of the word, adjusting our alcohol consumption proportionally.)

Throw the box office numbers on the bed and roll around in them for a little while. Go ahead, do it. It's Monday morning. You've earned it.

It takes a lot to dig us out from our ritual Sunday burial under empty Corona bottles, but when there's "breaking news" to report, we rise to the task. Apparently, Britney Spears will be involved in some marriage-related stunt at the MTV Video Music Awards tonight. So, you know, everyone should tune in to watch the lamest MTV/Spears publicity stunt since...last year's VMAs, when Spears and rapidly fading, semi-naughty icon Madonna engaged in perhaps the least titillating same-sex kiss by anyone without the last name O'Donnell. Our bold prediction: The "wedding" will be performed by Madonna, dressed in some kind of eroticized, shocking-for-1987 priest get-up. (Leather collar? Assless vestments?). And next year, expect a very messy (but completely expected) on-stage Spears suicide. There's really nowhere left to go.

—We can all rest easy knowing that Scrubs star/celeb blogger Zach Braff isn't a Scientologist. "Garden State focuses on a character that was incorrectly prescribed some very serious medication at a young age and never had the opportunity to find a way or reason to come off them. He also quits cold turkey which is something you should NEVER do! I completely support medicine when it's needed."
—Indeed, we did hear that the new Apprentice cast has profiles on Friendster. Alas, the dictates of good taste limit us to one Friendster-related post per day.
—Low Culture offers the nation's headline writers some new ideas for covering The Brown Bunny.
—Former members of the Crüe (Tommy Lee and Vince Neil) opt for reality shows instead of suicide. Did they make the right call? Only time will tell.

Allow us to execute this brief "shout out" to this week's sponsors, who make this fine, Hollywood-obsessed weblog product possible. Want to support the cause? More here.

Friday
1. Get your mope on at the Curiosa Festival. Better get to the Rite Aid or beauty supply store before there's a run on white Robert Smith face powder.
Saturday
2. This weekend Los Angeles’ Hell House opens to the public, featuring a rotating cast including David Cross, Bill Maher, Traci Lords, Sarah Silverman, and (many) more. Go and see the vivid illustrations of why you heathens will one day marinate in the saucy flames of Hades. (No, Botox is not an damnable offense, but Uggs certainly are.)
3. Watch artists from around the world gather for Chalk Fest 2004, where they draw on and around the stars in Hollywood Boulevard and puddles of homeless people’s urine. Kids can participate in their own chalk area for a $7 donation! (Kiddie urine puddles should be self-supplied.)
Sunday
4. Rock the Right, because it’s almost been a full whole day since we’ve had an anti-Bush concert. Truthfully, isn't that way too long?
5. Make sure Dave Matthews takes his shit with him after he plays the Home Depot Center.

We're going to post your guesses to slow the incredible flood of responses. You clearly relish the opportunity to point The Big Gay Finger at movie stars whenever the opportunity presents itself, and we love you for it.

Based on a flood of immediate reader feedback, we've been compelled to rethink our grade for Paris Hilton's logo. We've annotated the logo according to this new interpretation of what is obviously a design masterwork.

Today, some LAT editor is guilty of attaching the most inappropriately restrained headline to a sensational story. The headline in question: "Sony Pictures Exec, Wife Liable in Labor Lawsuit." The story: A Sony Picture VP James J, Jackson and his wife were found "liable for subjecting Nena Ruiz to involuntary servitude and for negligence and fraud."

The Smoking Gun digs up Paris Hilton's trademark application to register this incredibly disappointing "tiara" icon for the various consumer products she'll soon be launching. Really, this design has to be seen as an aesthetic failure. Isn't a logo supposed to evoke something essential about the thing it's signifying? Nothing about this suggests "celebutante skank sucking a cock in night-vision." Not even if you turn it upside down.

· The One Where David Schwimmer Finds That Post-Friends Acting Gigs Are All For Ross-like Characters And So Takes Time Off To Direct An Indie Movie: Schwimmer will direct Run, Fat Boy, Run from the script written by I Love the 80s icon Michael Ian Black. [THR]
· Superhack fauxteur director Brett Ratner brought on to ruin the film adaptation of the very cool story of the infamous "MIT Blackjack Team" that took Vegas casinos for millions. At least Ratner will get in some quality gambling time as the movie quickly gets away from him. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Bravo in talks with Bobby Brown for a new reality show about the singer's completely insane, wife-smacking, jail-time-doin' life with possibly cracked-out wife Whitney Houston. Please, Bravo, buy the fucking show! [THR]
· It sent his daughter to rehab, but that doesn't stop Tommy Hilfiger from trying to get into the reality TV act. CBS is thinking of ordering 13 episodes of the Apprentice knockoff for the fashion world. [THR]
· Scarlett Johansson will join Ewan MacGregor for DreamWork's The Island. Michael Bay is directing (we've already said superhack once in this round-up, so he gets a reprieve) so the actors will have little time for a dirty, Benicio-quality fling as they spend every waking moment dodging Bay's army of shaky, swooping cameras. [THR]

Blogger D-Nasty hypothesizes that Tara Reid is kindly mentoring fellow jiggly starlet Lindsay Lohan in the ways of young, wild, tipsy Hollywood: After all, the two share a host of interests, ranging from an affection for distilled spirits to a passion for displaying their cleavage in the presence of flashbulbs. We join D-nasty's imagined meeting of the really big...minds in medias res and we entreat you to click through, and enjoy the entire exchange.

Ah, late summer, when the studios release any old thing they have laying around the office.

We apologize for neglecting Ted Casablanca's blind item stepchildren yesterday and depriving you of the usual Thursday guessing game, but sometimes we get quite forgetful in the middle of our early-afternoon heroin nod. (That's right, we occasionally ride the horse, you wanna make something of it?) But since this week's Ted item involves everybody's favorite subject, i.e. "straight" actors and gay sex, it seems like it's worth a little Friday fun. Enjoy One Dude-Durable Blind Vice, and savor Ted's subtle butt-fucking allusion, "such a pain in the well-worked-out behind."

Now that everyone's grandmother is clogging up Friendster with profiles touting their interests in "dishes full of hard candy" and "euthanasia parties," the social-networking tool is finally safe for Hollywood. According to Variety, Universal is planning "a comedy that will follow relationships formed by fictitious users of the site." We haven't been this excited by the union of cutting edge computer and romantic comedy technology since You've Got Mail. It's going to be hilarious when Jason Biggs turns to one of those other American Pie guys and frets, "Yeah, I slept with her, but I don't even know her! She's only in my third-degree network!"

The Mystery Dawg blog has pictures from last night's Jenna Jameson book signing for her literary opus How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. The event looked pretty tame. We know Book Soup really isn't that kind of place, but we had envisioned Jameson doing the signing from inside a shark cage, which would harmlessly deflect fans' Pavlovian erections into the poetry section.

When the inspiration for your extremely expensive, adult-targeted CGI show is nearly mauled to death by one of your show's characters, there are a couple of different ways to handle it. You can ignore the shredded magician quietly recuperating in his mansion until he's recovered, or you can drag in a camera crew and shoot some footage to assure the advertisers and the public that the scarred and partially paralyzed freak is gonna be OK. Remember which one tiny super-executive team Jeff Zucker and Jeffrey Katzenberg chose? The LAT reminds us:

—"This will probably be the last edition until they come up with a new technology that will just beam us directly into your home and for $75 you get me and [co-star Jason] Mewes dancing and saying ‘Snootch to the Bootch!’" he added. "And you can probably do that with Ben Affleck too, star of Jersey Girl, if sh*t doesn’t turn around soon.”
—Scarlett Johansson's deeply, deeply troubling and misguided Daddy complex, starring the bloated John Travolta.
—Easily the funniest thing we've read all day, courtesy of geek-ass sister blog Gizmodo.
—The completely useless website of useless Queer Eye culture homo Jai Rodriguez. [via NewYorkish]
—Tom Leykis gets kicked in the head. Your first reaction is that it's a gang of women, but your first reaction is wrong.
—Low Culture has the "outline" for Tina Fey's latest script, about "[a] Hasidic Jew and a grizzled rock musician [who] form a band.
—Olympic swimming stud Michael Phelps totally hearts Lindsay Lohan, but we're pretty sure their training methods aren't compatible. [fifth item]