Dear Diary,
So, there I was with my little cart ready to zip off for a business trip and guess who walks into the elevator? None other than Ben Affleck! I couldn't believe it. I've been living out here in LA for a quite few years now and I finally had my first celebrity sighting. It was great. I kept my cool. I wanted to tell him that I was such a fan of his work, but the only movie I could think of was Forces Of Nature and I only sorted of remembered it. I think I saw it one time on cable. So, we just sort of went up to the second floor and nodded in agreement with each other a lot. It was great cause I was in an elevator with a big deal actor, but I just thought I was going to have a lot to say to him, that's all. Now, as I sit, looking back on the incident, I could come up with ten million things to talk about. Hindsight is always 20/20, as a wise man once said. Well, off to the company mixer.

It was the tribal rump-humping that would incite a beach-dwellers' Civil War. (OK, maybe not directly, but dotted-lines can be drawn.) In its path—a thousand Nicaraguan signoritas' hearts, mashed into a fine pulp. Of what do we speak? Why, Mashew McDonauhdgrl's flip-flop displacing Firewater Demon Dance of Handsy Pasión, of course! And thanks to the fee-meeting blurry-cellphone-video-producers at TMZ, we can finally catch the glimpse of the star of 8000 forgettable romcoms, caught red-handed as he...uh...kinda shakes his butt to the beat, sweats profusely, and doesn't come into direct contact with anyone else. Sssssscandalous.

Ah yes, The Standard Downtown. While lots of shenanigans have gone down there over the years, none of them have this good of a soundtrack. Enjoy as Molls and Ed bring you today's video of what's going down in Los Angeles tonight:
-Matt and Kim @ King King.
-Spider Problem @ The Silverlake Lounge.
-White Dog @ The Silent Movie Theater.

Last night’s Living Lohan was all about Ali and her glass-breaking array of vocal talents. The happy family, which is somehow shrinking and growing simultaneously every day now, is still taking Las Vegas by storm as each member’s collective talents go into creating International Superstar-Turned-Trainwreck number two. Little Cody helps out by distracting Dina with adolescent silliness like concussions and that all-too-common need to be “loved,” Ali helps broaden the franchise by doing her best Daddy Left Us And I’m Gonna Record My Angst- And Nicotine-Laced Breakdowns For You! rehashing of Lindsay’s already perfected musical adventures, and Dina grants us with another round of must-have parenting lessons:

Burned once by the infamous Class of 2000, upon whom they bestowed their Vanity Fair ® Fresh Faces™ Seal of Approval—only to see each and every cover subject's careers offed in increasingly elaborate, Final Destination-esque death sequences—the celebrity-fellating periodical of record is taking no chances with its current "Hollywood's New Wave" issue: Virtually every actor below the age of 18 to earn so much as a single line of dialogue on an episode of iCarly has been profiled in their Bright Young Hollywood portfolio, each posing seductively in their very own Annie Leibovitz "just fucked" portrait. Among the inductees is Superbad star Christopher Mintz-Plasse. We shit you not: McLovin gets to answer his own Pimply Proust Questionnaire:

A new book claiming to unveil "fun, fascinating facts" about celebrities and their drug habits may just be a collection of ancient quotes and anecdotes. As the NY Post reports today, The Curious World Of Drugs And Their Friends promises sordid tales involving Lindsay Lohan and details from her substance-fueled evenings before cokepants and trees put them on the back burner, but the story they cite from a "friend" sounds eerily familiar to one of our favorite classic Lohanisms from over a year ago. And the celebrities quoted as being "unable to talk to anyone without a nose full of cocaine," and having "spent the first 35 years of my life in a fog" due to drugs have either kicked their habits long ago or already (endlessly) confirmed to the world that they were once big league nose candy fans. The stars "featured," and exactly how dusty these quips are, after the jump.

"On Sunday, June 29," the web-blurb legend goes, "Shootout aired a 'Best of' episode on Summer Blockbusters. Guests Jon Favreau, Michael Bay, and Brett Ratner shared their experiences working on major summer spectaculars." And so it was written, and so it should come to pass, that through the magic of repackaging, three of Hollywood's most venerated fauxteurs should share reminiscences and insights with Variety's Peter Bart and Peter Guber. Highlighted above, an exchange with Transformers director and unwitting spondylitis spokesperson, Michael Bay: Acknowledging Bart's observation that he was born into box-office brothels, Bay goes on to pay loving tribute to shlock-piloting cicerones Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. (Note their imposing, circa-Days of Thunder publicity-shot in high-contrast B&W.) Without them, not a single extraneous helicopter explosion or lingering shot of Megan Fox's ass-crack would ever have been possible.

[Photo Credit: X17]

The series of events that led up to the arrest of Anne Hathaway's con-ex Raffaello Follieri by the FBI has the NY Daily News wondering—as voiced by an unidentified, freeform-hypothesizing "pal"—if perhaps the Get Smart star had colluded with the Feds in exchange for a "get out of jail while we book your crooked boyfriend for scamming God out of his savings"-card. They report:

After proving she had little to contribute to the film or starfucking industries, Jessica Simpson finally realized she should keep her pretty-but-pretty-dumb mouth shut for the time being and instead let her t-shirts do the talking, angering PETA in the process. Though the feisty baby seal saviors have their fair share of enemies, they've also impressively managed to get celebrity spokespeople like Alec Baldwin and Eva Mendes to embarrass themselves in public by demanding the public do drugs (Baldwin) or taking off their clothes in the name of fur (Mendes). So naturally, Simpson's public cry for attention irked PETA's most compassionate celebrity nudist, Pamela Anderson, who called her fellow talent-challenged blonde "a bitch and whore" on a radio show. But this is far from the first time Jessica has ruffled another starlet's feathers just by being Jessica. We took a look back at the many ways Simpson has made herself a household name not by selling records or movie tickets, but by starring in her own personal Catfights franchise.

We're still flipping through "The New Classics" issue of Entertainment Weekly that hit newsstands about two weeks ago. And while we feel that, on the whole, the staffers over there put together a pretty thorough examination of the last 25 years of pop culture, we do have a few qualms with their list. Chief among them is the inclusion of Casino Royale, the 2006 rebooting of the Bond franchise, which came in at #19 in their list of Top 100 movies. While it was certainly a serviceable action thriller, we've never quite been able to understand Owen Gleiberman's fascination with the film (he also rated it the top movie of 2006). Sure, the opening sequence was pretty cool if you've never seen Banlieue 13 or The Bourne Supremacy, but for us, the rest of the film was pure, uncut meh. After all, it couldn't have been just us who fell asleep during that interminable card game of Uno* that took up the entire third act of the film, right? But we're getting off track here. What we meant to be discussing all along is the new trailer for JB22, aka Quantum Of Solace, which we have for you after the jump.

As we noted last month, the New Village Academy is a private school in Calabasas set to open its doors Sept. 3, founded by Will Smith and wife/appearances-upholder Jada Pinkett Smith. It has become a source of much controversy for having several Scientologists on its staff, who espouse a number of L. Ron Hubbard-advanced learning concepts in the curriculum: among them, the meaninglessly designated "study technology" programme for effective and complete child mind-absorption. The Smiths—still not public with their Scientology affiliations—claim to only be committed to creating "an ideal educational environment." But Carnegie Mellon University professor David S. Touretzky, who has dissected study technology like a rusty E-meter and found it to be about as useful, warns parents away from this particular learning institution, lest they want to find themselves helping with homework essays entitled, "What I Did on My Billion-Years of Servitude Vacation." From the LAT:

[Photo Credit: INF Daily]

It's rare that one feels as though they can make a difference on this Big Blue Marble—even more so when that difference directly affects an internationally beloved movie star who's fallen upon hard times. And yet there Defamer was, driving a harrowing sequence from last night's The Two Coreys. At first, we were paralyzed by the "He knows we exist!"-effect that occurs when any lowly Movable Type drone is acknowledged by an eight-times undefeated Tiger Beat Fantasy Boyfriend of the Month. But we soon enough regained rudimentary use of our limbs as we observed Haim being guided by new assistant Nelle to our post about his "I'm ready to work" Variety notice—already considered a masterpiece of the self-perpetuated-comeback trade-ad genre.

Until now, we had some troubles fully accepting Lindsay Lohan As Lesbian. Don't get us wrong. We are major fans of unicorn-straddling shoe fairies, C-list lesbian couples coming out, and someone finally putting food on Portia de Rossi's table every night. But we were fond of Lindsay's borderline feminist habit of having zipless fucks with every guy she found in bathrooms, overseas, or on her friends' arms. So seeing the freckly nudist settle down was easier to swallow knowing the "relationship" was likely a figment of our horny imaginations. But as these new pictures from the set of Labor Pains show, the girl on girl performance may be more real than we hoped. A closer look at Hollywood's happiest couple, and details on what's making Lindsay so smiley around her Smokey Bunch girlfriend, after the jump.

As you may have noticed, we have been having some technical difficulties again this morning. Remember those prarie dogs we told you about? Well, in an embarrassing turn of events, we weren't able to get their Visas processed, so we were forced to once again to dip our toes into the difficult world of hamster recruiting. And now that hamsters have been empowered by Hollywood casting directors, it makes our job just that much more difficult. Our thanks to you for bearing with us as we try to get things shipshape...

[Photo Credit: Flynet]

If you emerged from Saturday's city-wide, Paps vs. Surfs caste riots with two or more limbs (and both flip-flops) intact, consider yourselves one of the lucky ones: It was a massacre out there, folks. Slow the bleeding with the box office numbers from this robust, bullet-bending moviegoing weekend:

· Things we learned at the Los Angeles Film Festival this week. School Of Rock 2 isn't a pipe dream. Guillermo del Toro isn't going to milk The Hobbit. Women deserve equal talk show hosting rights, too. Nobody wanted to make Animal House. Chris Carter is as secretive as ever. Did somebody order stake?
· The battle between the Paps and the Surfs was kinda like the Greasers versus the Socs, only with the newly blackberry-less Matthew McConaughey playing the role of Dally. But what of the rematch?
· Mini-Me showed the world his mini-me, which should help him knock down that large tax debt.
· Raffaello Follieri, Anne Hathaway's sketchball ex, got pinched for attempting to defraud God. A judge set bail at $21 million, but who's gonna take care of the dog?
· Mary Kate Olsen de-pruned herself long enough to convince Dave Letterman that her old arch enemy Spencer Pratt is, indeed, a prat.
· No one was safe as we counted down the Hollywood's Top Ten Worst Kissers.
· Wall-E manged to get fatties and Republicans up in arms without saying a word.
· Whoa, who raped the Coreys? One mystery solved, one to go.
· AC Slater found himself embroiled in Chesthairgate.
· The Emasculation of Joshua continued, as Katherine Heigl used her whipped husband as an ashtray and made him curl her hair. Joshua did not escape unscathed.
· You can ongratulate Jason Bateman on the impending Arrested Development movie, but be sure you don't bring up pregnant teens.
· We had a dream. We had an awesome dream. Mainly b/c it was filled with lesbian werewolves.
·: Noted blog-hater Patrick Goldstein entered the blogosphere. We can only guess how many of his 1,100 pageviews came from his IP address.
· Which groovy comedy superstar is openly courting other men to touch his monkey? Perhaps they should frequent the Fox and Sony lots?
· Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits. We'll miss you, George.

The math is adding up much better today in the Mini-Me Sex Tape "Scandal" that so devastated our frail culture this week, especially now that we're learning more about the $283,000 in taxes that Verne Troyer reportedly owes in California and Michigan. It's kind of a stunning amount in relation to the 32-inch-tall actor, but considering the $20 million lawsuit he's leveled at the part-time porn purveyors at TMZ, at least it looks like he might come out ahead once Uncle Sam gets his cut.