GQ-baiting L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke takes an extremely thorough look behind the scenes of legendary entertainment lawyer Barry Hirsch's midnight defection from his old law firm to set up a practice of his own (which the Defamer legal correspondent analyzed for us a week ago). Our favorite quote from the piece follows; we find something patently hilarious about an agent getting self-righteous about lawyers suing each other. Do these lawyers go around whining in the press about you throwing a phone log at your assistant because he doesn't roll calls fast enough or for hanging around bars in a suit?

LAist's Paul Davidson overhears some struggling actors engaging in near-identical conversations "at Swingers, a Beverly Drive newsstand, and Urth Cafe."

When we saw this story about what regularly-chafed sister site Fleshbot referred to as "Britney Boobenslippen," we knew it was again time to press the official Defamer German translator into service. It should be noted that the translator's not a native speaker, but we think that just leads to more linguistic fun. Is there an English equivalent of "the Slut-Shock"? Well, there should be, and it should be incorrectly tattooed somewhere on Britney's body. If nothing else, we've discovered that there is perhaps nothing funnier than a spottily-translated German white trash joke.

1. Get tips from a pro at the Jenna Jameson booking signing for How to Make Love Like A Porn Star at Book Soup. You might want to save anything involving extra partners or complicated acronyms for a special occasion.
2. Recapture the excitement of the early days of your relationship, when you had to play along with classy things like "Mozart Under the Stars" at the Hollywood Bowl to get some action.
3. Impress your partner with the famous people you know by bringing them to DJ Jazzy Jeff’s party at Cinespace. Try to look convincingly disappointed when your "good pal" Will Smith bails on the event.
4. Take your partner to a period movie with a healthy helping of hot, bodice-ripping sex: The ArcLight screens Dangerous Liaisons followed by a Q&A with producer Hank Moonjean.

Defamer is committed to bringing together Los Angeles area residents with potential companions. Today, we spotlight this Craiglist apartment listing to do our part in matching a lonely roommate-with-benefits seeker with his ideal, cash-strapped snuggle buddy.

Kyle Buchanan of Ostrich Ink notices that the new Tony Danza and Jane Pauley talk shows are flogging their dirty wares with the exact same tagline. ("Familiar Face. Brand New Place" vs. "A Familiar Face in a Brand New Place.") Somewhere, the world's smartest ad executive is high-fiving the hooker riding shotgun in his Mustang convertible as they escape to a life of leisure on a secluded Mexican beach, leaving only a fluttering trail of twenty dollar bills and some angry television producers in their wake. Danza and Pauley, meanwhile, are left to fight over a trite tagline and Oprah's sloppy seconds. Sometimes it does seem the universe has a sense of humor.

Yesterday's "call to arms" to resist the MPAA's cloying "Respect Copyrights" PSAs is off to a great start. In fact, some readers took the protest to the next, completely awesome level, leaving us somewhat ashamed that we didn't think this up in the first place. Pirate taunts!

· Temporarily adorable muppett Dakota Fanning is in talks to star in a potential DreamWorks "Wonderland" franchise. The deal would include film adaptations of Lewis Carroll books Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. They'd better hurry, before Fanning falls into that unsettling "Haley Joel Osment" space. [THR]
· Unexpected truth in THR headlines: "Bullock might be past 'Prime.'" Sandra Bullock drops out of Prime two weeks before filming due to "script disagreements." Cue the inevitable, obnoxious rhetorical question: She's still acting? [THR]

Crazy-eyed The Brown Bunny fauxteur Vincent Gallo was on the Howard Stern radio show this morning, and his tour-de-force appearance nearly won us over. He slagged Buffalo 66 co-star/Eastside staple Christina Ricci as a good actress when she wasn't drunk on the set and lit into her publicist for promoting "fag movie" The Opposite of Sex over his. He took down an entire generation of actors as "DeNiro clones." He ably defended himself when Roger Ebert called in to remind everyone that the version of TBB that he saw in Cannes was "the worst movie ever made," even shifting his famous cancer curse on Ebert over to Paula Froelich at Page Six. [Ed. note—Paula, the man has creepy powers. Please take care of yourself.] He admitted to having sex with Paris Hilton, whom he insisted was "sexual" (um, duh) and "bright" (Gallo please). We were enraptured, for he might indeed say anything.

We've all made passing references to Disney as "evil" or Michael Eisner as "sprung from the salty, infernal seed of Beelzebub." But in today's LAT, a visiting law professor from D.C. drags his family to Disneyland to uncover the Satanic underpinnings behind every carefully fabricated encounter within the Magic Kingdom.

We can't believe we're writing this, having thought we'd all achieved some measure of closure last week. Paris Hilton didn't lose her dog. She left it at her grandparents' house. (And in case you're still incredulous, her rep denied it—we might as well start typesetting the Tinkerbell page in Encyclopedia Britannica.) Can the tabloids have their free publicity back?

—Obvious but necessary joke of the day: Finally, someone's trying to stop the Dave Matthew Band from polluting the environment...with his totally crappy hippie music! LOL!
—Laura Dern obviously skipped yesterday's Fox exposé on the secrets of eternal youth in Hollywood.
—MTV.com blames Madonna's VMA Kiss of Death for everything short of Lance Armstrong's cancer.
—Still More Hollywood Second Acts: Former football player/Stone Cold star Brian Bosworth now at Coldwell Banker. [via Thighs Wide Shut]
—Without Craig "Craigslist" Newmark, how would anyone ever meet their foxy "mfw—25" Missed Connection from the Trader Joe's on La Brea?
—Our "Respect Copyrights" crusade already gaining steam!

The NYT takes a crack at solving the "mystery" behind director Ted Griffin's quickie firing from The Untitled Ted Griffin Project, or The Untitled 'The Graduate' Project, or Otherwise Engaged, or whatever it's being called these days. And, amazingly, it seems no one was to blame! Griffin's agent (Steve Rabineau, agents love to see their names in print) claims Costner wasn't yet filming and so couldn't have ignited a mutiny; Jennifer Aniston's manager (Mark Gurvitz, ditto for managers) said she "had never looked at dailies and had never called the studio," therefore could not have been in the conservatory with a candlestick when Griffin got bludgeoned. We're so glad they cleared all of this up for us. It should have been obvious that Griffin decided after one week that he wasn't any good at the directing thing and engineered his own firing.

A reader offers this anecdote in defense of "Respect Copyrights" movie star Manny Perry, proving that even if Jack Valenti's brainwashing can turn Hollywood's below-the-line workers into anti-piracy agitprop icons, it can't necessarily taint their character:

Dualstar Entertainment Group LLC (i.e. the Century City HQ of The Olsen Twins' Evil Empire) is looking for an "experienced, creative and multi-tasking editor" who "must be able to write, edit and copy edit lively original content in the fashion, health and entertainment arenas to serve a teen and ’tween audience." The ideal candidate's duties can range from coming up with yummy diet ideas to coordinating kid-friendly, strategically vague press releases with publicists should one of the girls develop any more vexing health problems. The full listing is at Mediabistro (and partially reproduced after the jump). Good luck, job hunters!

It's not every day that a former Facts of Life cast member holds forth on borderline methods of child abuse. But behold Blair's defense of "hot saucing," the child-disciplinary practice that's sweeping the nation:

A reader elaborates on a mention of the Bruce Willis flick Hostage in the Variety article about Miramax's updated release schedule (which we linked to earlier):

Recently, we were respecting the entertainment industry's copyrights in a $14 Cinerama Dome seat when Hollywood stunt coordinator Manny Perry began his impassioned plea for us to further respect copyrights by visiting the MPAA's scary website after leaving the theater. A chorus of groans rose up from the audience as the dreaded words faded into view: "Manny Perry Makes Movies." We don't personally blame Manny Perry for his misguided participation in the MPAA propaganda, as we assume that Jack Valenti was holding his wife hostage at gunpoint while threatening to feed his infant daughter to a poorly-bred pit bull in Manny Perry's ranch-style home in Chatsworth, but that doesn't mean that others are so understanding. Here's a representative sample of our readers' frustration:

· The Toronto International Film Festival officially takes its place as "Canada's Sundance, Minus The Megalomaniac Actor Pulling The Strings" with a line-up of 328 films. Also, Kevin Spacey poses suggestively with a microphone on THR's home page in a pic from his TIFF entry, Under The Sea. [THR]
· Financially troubled Miramax pushes the release dates of The Great Raid and The Brothers Grimm closer to Christmas...in 2005. This presumably will allow what's left of their workforce time to hunt through Harvey Weinstein's sofa cushions for the movies' publicity and advertising campaign budgets. [Variety, sub.req'd.]
· FX renews Denis Leary drama Rescue Me, proving that pretty much anyone can get a second chance with a basic cable show. [THR]
· Everyone wants to be in a movie about Truman Capote, except Mark Wahlberg. Samantha Morton and Chris Cooper are in talks to join Phillip Seymour Hoffman in UA's biopic. Meanwhile, the rival Capote film from Warner Independent, Every Word is True, loses both star Marky Mark's wooden acting as well as the crew morale-boosting prosthetic cock jokes. [THR]
· Cartoonist Garry Trudeau gets script deal for story about a teen who becomes mayor of a small town. Is he the talking cat guy or the talking dog guy? We haven't read the funny pages since Bloom County went away. [Variety, sub. req'd]

Today's LAT article on the struggles of little people in Hollywood to change the public's image and gain mainstream acting roles effectively (and probably inadvertantly) advances their cause—by illustrating that actors of small stature can act just as crazy in the pursuit of a part as your run-of-the-mill, full-size Cheesecake Factory waiter with a 1982 Datsun full of headshots. Little person actor Eugene Pidgeon has tried to write himself into Gilmore Girls and is finally receiving the "equal treatment" he craves.