· Tuesday Night Music: Yaz vocalist Alison Moyet plays the Grove of Anaheim, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band play the Henry Fonda, and the Silverlake Lounge hosts Monster, My Name is Guy, and Satellite Crush. · It's a star-studded night at the Dave Hill Explosion: none other than Rufus-sirer and Apatow Repertory Player Loudon Wainwright III and Xena: Warrior Princess's Lucy Lawless herself will be the guests. At the UCB Theater, with Dave Hill as your master of ceremonies, as always. · Animation historian Jerry Beck hosts a night of monster cartoons from the 1930s to the 1960 at the Cinefamily Silent Movie Theater—one of our favorite places in LA.

Who will move the E-meter needle tonight? If Katie can't do it, we know Cloris will. WATCH Scream Awards 2008 [9 PM, Spike] - Here's an awards show that won't bore you to tears. Taped last Saturday at The Greek Theatre, the Scream Awards honor sci-fi, horror and fantasy entertainment. Many of us remember a delightful Page Six item from two years ago involving Quentin Tarantino, finger-sucking and sliders which was courtesy of the Screams. If that wasn't enough motivation to cancel that rendezvous with your tennis coach, note that Tim Burton arrives onstage via hot air balloon, George Lucas accepts an award while flanked by stormtroopers and the Smashing Pumpkins perform.

With the Sarah Palin-skewering SNL ascendant and the Republican-helmed satire An American Carol flailing at the box office (because of those pro-immigration chihuahuas), Boston Globe writer Lisa Wangsness has a provocative point to make: that events like these illustrate "the extent to which comedy has become a liberal genre in America." If you take the success of left-leaning satires like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and couple it with the mileage wrung from the McCain/Letterman War of '08, does it augur a bold new era of Democratic ha-has?Says Wangsness:

Click to viewBoomp3.com Popular film actress Rosario Dawson appeared to be very excited about unloading some negative energy and loading up on the positive vibes at a Los Angeles loading station. Dawson said, “There’s just so much negativity in the world and thank goodness there’s a place where I can unload and stock up on the good vibes without having to go San Pedro.” [Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Having already enjoyed the effects of one defribrillation at the hands of master career re-animator Quentin Tarantino, '70s TV acting icon (with occasional forays into B-movies like Alligator and Disney's The Black Hole) Robert Forster makes another deserved comeback on NBC's sprawling super-power fantasia, Heroes.On last night's action-packed episode, Forster reprised his role as the previously-thought-dead Petrelli family patriarch. Our initial fears that evaporated Oscar chances and a recurring role on Huff had inflicted unspeakable damage upon his physical well-being were quickly put to rest when Forster began laying his hands on various deathbed well-wishers, thereby sucking away their youthful supervitality and melting away the years. (We imagine Joan Rivers employs a similar technique.) In the scene above, his own son—played with convincing, Windex-conducting intensity by Milo Ventimiglia—falls victim to Forster's devious ways, stripping Ventimiglia of all his special gifts, including the one where he pretends to care about Japanese dolphins long enough to get inside some indestructable-cheerleader spanky pants.

Rudy Ray Moore, the blaxploitation icon, rap pioneer and generally batshit genius behind Dolemite and roughly 1 million dirty jokes over the last 50 years, died Sunday of complications from diabetes. He was 81 — and he lived every day of it, too, from his early R&B circuit roots to decades of working comedy rooms so blue that his labels couldn't promote him and record shops had to hide his racy, soft-core album covers behind the sales counter. His cult exploded in 1975 with the release of Dolemite, featuring Moore as a wronged ex-con seeking revenge, redemption, and not just a little sex; the sequel The Human Tornado emerged in 1976, followed by the Moore's sureally rhyming, ass-kicking apotheosis Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-in-Law in 1978. His influence touched three generations — often inappropriately and unapologetically, and we miss him already. Follow the jump for an all-too-short (and NSFW) sampling of his finest, and wish St. Peter the best of luck checking Dolemite and Mr. Blackwell in within one day of each other. [LAT]

Sandwich Girls? If the raft of special guest stars hadn't tipped you off that NBC would do anything to draw eyeballs to the new season of 30 Rock, how about this: they're spicing up their promos with hardcore anal sex! According to MyHogtown, a recent afternoon ad for 30 Rock that ran in the Greater Toronto area was inexplicably spliced with a snippet of hardcore porn featuring some backdoor action. If viewers couldn't believe their eyes, they were in luck: the porn-laden ad ran again less than twenty minutes later. Truly, a programming move worthy of MILF Island exec Jack Donaghy. [MyHogtown]

Last week, I listed some of the most liberal and conservative television shows on the air, my criteria being, as always, completely unscientific. Well now those old TV gurus at Nielsen have actually compiled hard data showing the series most appealing to conservatives, liberals, and—like a great big dim blue glowing dream of America!—to both. Conservative shows? Hillbilly sitcom The Bill Engval Show and Brett Michaels hepatitispalooza Rock of Love. No surprise. Liberal shows? Bill O'Reilly mockery the Colbert Report, natch, and toe-sucking mess of a dating show I Love New York. Sigh. (Rock of Love vs. I Love New York... Could be a conservatives vs. liberals socioeconomic race relations term paper in there, kids!) The best news of all though? That The Hills is gloriously, like a dove holding a bejeweled olive branch in its perfectly toned beak, bipartisan. Take a look at the full chart after the jump.

MISTRIAL! After extended jury deliberations that lasted twice as long as the trial itself, the Britney Spears License Trial of the Century ended this afternoon in a mistrial. Attorneys gave their closing arguments another try this morning, not long after the jury foreman acknowledged the panel was split 10-2 (he wouldn't disclose which way) as to whether or not Spears broke the law last summer while driving, hitting and running without a California license. The singer avoids potential jail time at a critical juncture in her career, thus clearing her name (for now), restoring her newfound momentum and reopening herself to another decade at least of catty Mr. Blackwell rejoinders from beyond the grave. Congrats, Brit! [AP]

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes attended a cocktail party for the cast of the revival of All My Sons last night at Hermes's flagship store in New York, shocking fans and jaded paparazzi alike as they emerged from their limousine to reveal that the two had morphed into virtually the same person—a freak evolutionary byproduct of Cruise having spent every waking moment since May 2005 obsessively observing his wife for signs of resistance or flight. Granted, Holmes still enjoyed one distinguishing feature in her six-inch height differential, but that should even out in no time once the ancient Scientological practice of calf-binding completes its painful, appendage-condensing process. [Photo credit: WENN via Hollyscoop]

Though she's received widespread acclaim for playing Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey is typically self-effacing about the gig. First, she claimed that her uncannily accurate impression was the easiest voice to do since Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade, and now, while talking to TV Guide about the physical adjustments she makes to play Palin, she belittled her own looks in comparison to the candidate's:

And now, for what will presumably be its last trick before tumbling into a three-and-a-half-year election hangover, Saturday Night Live is rumored to have booked Barack Obama for an appearance on its Nov. 1 episode. The cameo replaces the candidate's original guest spot on last month's season premiere, which Obama was said to have backed out of in anticipation of Hurricane Ike. But one blogger's recently posed conspiracy theory is way more fun, suggesting that Lorne Michaels and Obama campaign overlord David Axelrod instead colluded at the time for a November surprise. But like Alec Baldwin, whom Michaels is said to have coaxed to the set last week with Harvey Levin's home phone number and a week's supply of gay venison, Obama, too, is pay-to-play through Election Day:

Click to viewBoomp3.com Sporting her finest cut-offs, Spider Man trilogy star Kirsten Dunst stopped off at a Early Voting facility. After she walked out of the voting booth, Dunst did her best Palin Dance to celebrate her decision to rock the vote. Dunst quickly added, “I may be doing the Dance, but it doesn’t mean that I voted for her. Although, I would love to see Tina Fey have all that work.” [Photo Credit: X17] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

· Vince Vaughn is developing and executive producing a single-camera sitcom for Fox, about "a couple of young men who are just out of college and starting to experience the real world." No title yet, but we submit Just the Tip. [Variety] · Intermittently engaging, Jimmy Smits-employing serial killer dramedy Dexter gets two more seasons on Showtime, promising we'll at least get to see Junior Dexter develop to his Terrible Dayschool-Slaughterer Twos. [Variety] · Universal wants to sell Rogue Pictures—the studio behind The Strangers and its sequel, The Strangiers— to Relativity Media. [Variety] After the jump: Which of NBC's homoerotically-charged new series just got a full season pickup?· Graphic novel Freaks of the Heartland, a Midwestern tale of "horrible secrets" about a monstrous six-year-old, will be adapted for the screen by Pineapple Express director David Gordon Green, who's also writing the adaptation of frat-hazing memoir Goat. [THR] · NBC ordered nine more episodes of Knight Rider, the first new NBC show to get a full-season pickup. Because it's so awesome! Have you seen what that car can do? [THR]

We've heard of (and often tried) a lot of ways to ladder-climb in Hollywood, but "superstar tax-evasion defense attorney" is one we had pretty far down our list, just above "blogger." Still, that's not stopping Robert Bernhoft and Robert Barnes (or simply "the Bobs," as Portfolio refers to them in its November issue) from parlaying their momentum from last spring's Wesley Snipes trial into a kind of Malibu-based, Uncle Sam-swatting empire. "Wait," you ask, "didn't Wesley Snipes get three years in prison for misdemeanor tax evasion?" True, but these pinstriped paragons of justice have their own brazen, slightly lawyerly way of looking at it.After all, they argue, Snipes dropped the Bobs after they urged a "good-faith" offer to defray his tax debt on three misdemeanor charges — unprecedentedly dropped from the original six counts for his nonpayment from 1999 to 2005. The actor's rejection of the deal (at least until he showed up with $5 million in personal checks on the day of his sentencing) set the attorneys up to have their historic cake and eat it, too. And to hear Bernhoft and Barnes tell it, it's a delicious cake; if only there were government-stiffing action stars in their native Milwaukee to share it with. Next stop: Malibu, where they've already roped in Girls Gone Wild kingpin Joe Francis, who faces 10 years in prison if convicted next spring of felony tax evasion. And from there? The gutter is apparently the limit:

Finally, some good news from television! At least, we think it's good news. Showtime has renewed their serial killer with a heart of gold drama Dexter for another two seasons. The show has been a ratings boon for the premium cable network, which continues to fortify its stable of original series in the hopes of overtaking HBO as the King of Sunday Night. And, again, we're pretty sure this is good news. I mean it is, right? The season currently airing, the show's third, has been good enough so far, we think. Some of us here at HQ are sick of Rita's scrunchy-faced whining. The baby/marriage plotline was sort of inevitable, as they couldn't really have had Dex skulking around an only semi-serious relationship forever. The whole Prado business is... well, it's whatever. We're not really sure where Jimmy Smits' character arc is headed, but we hope it's surprisingly gruesome. Because, you know, that's what this show does best. And, once again, Jennifer Carpenter steals the show as sister Deb, who is getting tangled up not only in an Internal Affairs investigation, but with a sultry guitar-playing CI as well. She sure knows how to pick 'em! So what say you? Is two more seasons a good thing, or should this show be Saran Wrapped to a table and cruelly put out of its misery?

Click to viewBoomp3.com Potential Los Angeles Clippers savior Baron Davis was spotted leaving an event with Kate Hudson on Monday night. Before hoping into his SUV, Hudson jokingly told the baller that if he had signed with the Lakers he could have probably partied with even bigger celebrities like Cloris Leachman or Angelina Jolie. David politely told Hudson that there was nobody bigger than her, then bit his thumb and thought about all the fun he could be having if he wore purple and gold. [Photo Credit: X17] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Kudos must be extended to tyro presidential helmer Barack Obama, whose record $150 million fundraising haul in September put him over the $600 million mark and finally allowed his campaign to overcome Titanic's heretofore-insurmountable domestic gross. 23/6 envisions the Variety ad announcing the whammo development; now, the Obama/Biden ticket must hope that with two weeks until the election, no iceberg is in sight (still, he'll never let go, Joe... he'll never let go).

The $42 Million Question. What would Mel Gibson's church do with that much in tax-free assets? The guesses are on this morning after the actor-director's Agoura Hills redoubt at the Church of the Holy Family recently revealed another $10 million tossed into its coffers, with few expenses beyond building add-ons and $69,000 in legal services. Gibson is reportedly the only contributor to the church, which has about 70 members and has performed no charitable giving of note. The Vatican doesn't recognize the man or the institution (and he doesn't recognize it), so how is an Oscar-winning anti-Semite to spend all that cash? God knows he's not putting much into his father's Web site, unless you count the $20 in sound effects thrown over that forboding picture of Jesus. [Fox News]

Zack Snyder's film adaptation of the acclaimed graphic novel Watchmen has certainly undergone some legal bumps in its journey to the big screen, but ever since the release of the film's teaser trailer, fans have consoled themselves with one silver lining: the movie looks like a frame-by-frame recreation of Alan Moore's original work (albeit with more of Snyder's signature, 300-honed slow-mo). So, imagine our surprise as word leaked out from a super-secret Watchmen test screening that Snyder had incurred fanboy death threats by changing Moore's iconic ending! Spoilers below, natch: