· Neil Patrick "other out gay actor on a network TV series" Harris, who recently stood alongside noted pink F-bomb detonator Isaiah Washington while announcing the People's Choice Award nominations sans gay-slur incident, weighed in with his thoughts on the matter: "I was just sort of stunned that anyone would want to rehash any of that again. But I think the people, the classier people, handled it as they always do." In case you're still in the dark, "classy" is the new code for famous gays and their best friend co-stars who offer to beat up their homophobic tormentors on their behalf. [People]
· Ellen DeGeneres focused on the word itself, telling Extra: "This particular word is thrown around all the time at the workplace, at the playground, on the sports field and no one gets outraged. Hopefully this incident will put an end to this and people will stop using this word and other hateful words once and for all." Let's hope the insanity stops here, and that Jorja Fox isn't forced to drop by Ellen to tearfully recount the time Gil Grissom called her a "greedy rugmuncher" upon discovering she ate the last craft service banana. [Extra]
· John Mayer addresses the controversy on his blog today, suggesting the most poetically just penance would be for Washington's Grey's Anatomy character Dr. Preston Burke to "come out to his friends and colleagues as a gay man!!!" (Extra-squealy triple exclamation marks his.) He then proceeds to script how that scene might play out, for what feels like an uncomfortably long, not particularly funny, length of time. [JohnMayer via Towleroad]

We imagine that a recent Law & Order story-pitching session went something like this: gather around the conference room table, flip open a newspaper, point at the big picture of O.J. Simpson, grunt in satisfaction at a job well done, order in some lunch, then call it a day. A tipster passed along the casting notice generated by the above feat of creative exertion:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in at least as often as you floss. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the special post-appendectomy, pre-rehab moments Lindsay Lohan shared with Joe Francis.

· The Art Directors Guild chose fifteen nominees in three categories—period, fantasy, and contemporary—with awards to be presented Feb. 17 at the Beverly Hilton. With Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, Pirates of the Caribbean, Superman Returns, and V for Vendetta in direct competition, the fantasy ballot alone is likely to send fanboys into a locked, upstairs bathroom to "examine" it more closely. [Variety]
· The Cinema Audio Society awards none other than longtime Oscars producer Gil Cates with their Filmmaker Award. (He's a filmmaker?) Congratulations, Gil, for demonstrating excellence under your many hats of "director and producer in feature films, television and theater." And don't forget blogger! [THR]
· Borat's Ken "Rancid Bubble" Davitian recently took some time to appreciate his good fortune as he made his way through a Golden Globes gifting suite: "I'm a short, fat and bald guy living the good life after an overnight success that took 30 years." [LA Daily News]
· Unless you're a meth addict, morning show anchor, or triathlete in training, you'll probably have to set your alarms in order to be up in time to watch the Oscar nominations announced live, Tuesday morning at 5:30 am. [The Envelope]
· And the "For Your Considerationy" for Most Adorable Tiny Internet Ad goes to... [Universal Pictures Awards]

Join us in slaughtering the fatted calf in honor of this week's sponsors, whose graven images we will continue to worship as long as they continue to financially support our heathen blogging endeavors. But before moving on to the customary bullet-pointed rundown of our advertisers, enjoy this fun poll sponsored by The Sundance Festival Dailies:

· Al Pacino will play flamboyant artist Salvador Dali in Dali & I: The Surreal Story, a project which should provide the actor with an exciting opportunity to dramatically wave around a paintbrush while shouting, "Melting clocks! Hoo-ah!" [Variety]
· Robert Redford "came out swinging" at Sundance's opening press conference, taking shots at the Bush administration and decrying those who would use his swag-suite-riddled festival as a film buyer's market instead of a pure time for appreciating independent moviemaking, then jetted off to shoot his Tom Cruise movie. [THR]
· United 93's Paul Greengrass will write and direct movie about life in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion for Working Title and Universal, right after he finishes up the latest Bourne flick for Uni. [Variety]
· ABC and CBS score big ratings numbers on Thursday with Grey's Anatomy and CSI, Smallville, while Fox gets a reminder about the disaster that is their non-Idol schedule, landing right back in the Nielsen toilet on a night without Simon Cowell. [THR]
· Var's Peter Bart takes the temperature of Hollywood's pol-fuckers, looking at the state of Obamamania, Hillarymania, Edwardsmania, and Goremania. [Variety]

Chapter headings continue to pile-up for the yet-to-be-written bestseller entitled My Nightmare Year: How I Lost a Son, Gained a Daughter, and Found True Love, by Anna Nicole Smith (as told to a ReganBooks-appointed ghostwriter). The Bahamian inquest into the death of her son is set for March 26. TMZ reported earlier this week that 20 witnesses, including Smith and Howard K. Stern, are being called to testify, and that another will testify they saw Stern give Daniel the methadone that killed him, then "[flush] the remaining methadone down the toilet after Daniel died." Now, a Bahamian law firm Smith hired shortly after the death to handle her affairs is suing her for their fees:

Perhaps souring on Hillary Clinton's further political ambitions because she seems "not president-y enough" among Hollywood types trying to imagine casting her in the role of the nation's highest office, the industry is surging behind Entertainment Weekly's 2006 Must Guy To Have Sitting Next To You On A Panel About Something Important, Like That Darfur Deal, Illinois senator Barack Obama. Yesterday's NY Daily News reported that Endeavor's Ari "My Brother Rahm Totally Parties With Barack!" Emanuel will be throwing an event for Obama in February, while the LAT's Cause Celebre column today notes that he may have already sown up the industry-kingmaking Gay Mafia vote of Velvet Potentate David Geffen:

Blink and you may have missed him, but that was indeed NBC president Kevin Reilly making a quick cameo on last night's episode of The Office, flexing his programming-executive-level acting jobs by effectively communicating his confusion at Dwight's multiple resumes without a single line of dialogue. While brief, the promising appearance could lead to a bigger role on future shows now that Reilly's proven his chops to the producers; don't be surprised to see the aspiring thespian return later in the season, offering another wordless performance to rival the scene-stealing turns achieved by the Staples MailMate shredder or his corporate parents' own Trivection Oven.

Guests lists at industry parties are a tricky matter, and their convoluted politics become even more complex when one's throwing an exclusive post-awards show orgy, as hosts try to balance the ratio of talent to the behind-the-scenes types hoping to fellate them: invite too many famous faces and they might end up wandering the party looking vaguely lost, frustrated as seemingly every eager reveler is already engaged in the act of servicing someone else; invite too few, and guests will mob the talent, greedily clawing at the overattended VIPs for some celebrity-pampering time. Things become more tangled still when personal histories are involved, and the defiant uninvited show up, determined to test the superhuman power of fame over velvet rope and clipboard, as demonstrated by today's Page Six item about an alleged confrontation between Sean "Still Diddy This Month" Combs and the CAA gatekeepers trying to keep the boldface interloper out of their post-Globes party at the Sunset Tower:

· Pictured: At the press conference officially opening the 2007 Sundance Film Festival earlier this afternoon, Robert Redford addressed the media: "Hey, guys. Did you hear that we've got that movie where Dakota Fanning gets...how do I say this? Raped. Yeah, I know...heavy, powerful stuff. What, she's here? Hey, Dakota! You're gonna get that Oscar nomination, I just know you are, kid. You didn't surrender your innocence for nothing. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, we've also got that documentary about the guy who was fucked to death by a horse. Check it out. Nutty."
· Ryan Seacrest is shocked that Angelina Jolie wouldn't even pretend she could tolerate his pointless red carpet questions.
· The WOW Report got thisclose to getting Lindsay Lohan on the phone from the Wonderland Rehabilitation Clinic and Luxury Day Spa.
· Nikki Finke dives deep into Brad Grey's "boorish" table-hopping at the Globes.
· In just a little over four hours, you can engage in some hott cyber with the Horny Manatee.
· This is exactly what it would sound like if Matthew McConaughey forgot to get your Dr. Pepper.

With his dream gig on the line, Isaiah Washington appears to have reassessed his position on not hiring a "great shiny publicist" to help him rehabilitate his now tarnished, no-longer-welcome-on- Atlantis-Cruise-Lines image. He released this mea culpa just moments ago:

· Music round-up: The Transmissions, Death to Anders and more at a Killradio benefit at the Echo; Los Abandoned at Amoeba; Low vs. Diamond at the Troubadour.
· The Egyptian hosts the second annual Focus on Female Directors showcase, with short films by Zoe Cassavetes, Gwyneth Paltrow & Mary Wigmore, and Sanaa Hamri. [flavorpill]
· Mark Schiff and Ritch Shydner sign I Killed: True Stories of the Road from America's Top Comics at Book Soup, which apparently includes an anecdote about Jay Leno actually having a groupie. Shocking.

When Donald Trump decided to try and revive his flagging Apprentice franchise by relocating it to Los Angeles, it guaranteed that he'd have access to local talent pre-degraded by jobs in the entertainment industry, for whom a potential Trump Organization imprisonment in a supply closet on an unfinished golf course would seem an appealing career option. But since employers here might not be so eager to lend their personnel to a weeks-long, televised job interview, contestants like entertainment lawyers Derek Arteta (of New Line) and Kristine Lefebvre (fret not, "The Lawyer in Me" section of her personal site is just a professional bio, not work in some legal-themed pornography) had to sneak off under the cover of "personal time" to do the show. THR, Esq. reports that their "vacationing" co-workers learned of their reality TV activities only after the cast was announced, but were nonetheless supportive of their dreams of Trump-branded subjugation:

Despite appeals from gay rights groups to apologize, Isaiah "I love gay" Washington remains stubbornly tight-lipped regarding his use of the word "faggot" to disparage Grey's Anatomy co-star T.R. Knight, a wound reopened when he shouted it again in a denial of the incident to a roomful of reporters at Monday's Golden Globes. ABC brass, realizing they have to say something, has released this preliminary statement on the matter:

With its highly publicized "get" of high-profile starlet-in-distress Lindsay Lohan, the Wonderland Center automatically becomes the hottest rehabilitation center in Los Angeles, and surely will prove the destination of choice for other Hyde regulars looking to make proactive decisions about their health. But what made Lohan choose Wonderland over the many fine sobering-up options that living in one of the most drug-addled cities on the planet affords her? The facility recognizes that those who toil in the entertainment industry are far too busy to throw away 28 potential shooting days on recovery, and has tailored its outpatient offerings to reflect this fact of Hollywood life. Radar points us to the passage on the Wonderland website describing their industry-friendly services:

It's always exciting when Forbes puts together a Hollywood list, for you know the wealth-obsessed monthly will eschew such abstract variables as "heat," "power" and "it-ness" for the very quantifiable metric of net worth in U.S. dollars. The "Forbes Top 20 Richest Women in Entertainment" report is a potent reminder that one needn't be in possession of a dangling manhood in order to amass a massive show business fortune (though the occasional eating disorder certainly doesn't appear to hurt). Your top ten:

After a one-year hiatus in which Russians were granted the honor of being 24's Ethnic Group Hellbent on Wiping Out Our Nation, Muslims find themselves cast as the [spoiler alert, if you haven't seen the premiere] nuke-detonating fanatics charged with bedeviling Jack Bauer and his CTU pals this season, prompting an American-Islamic relations advocacy group who once pleaded with Fox to give them a break to renew their protests over Muslims' portrayal on the show. The AP reports that Fox issued a statement late Wednesday night answering the criticism, reassuring concerned parties that they're committed to dramatizing that true believers of any background are capable of depopulating Cerritos with an improvised nuclear device:

· Heading into the festival, which officially starts today and concludes next Sunday, the two movies with the biggest buzz are The Ten, a Ten Commandments satire from Wet Hot American Summer director David Wain, and Grace Is Gone, with John Cusack playing an Iraq War widower. But without the benefit of big stars, Teeth is managing to get some attention as well, probably because it revolves around a teenage girl who learns about "the pitfalls and the power of being a living example of the vagina dentata myth," aka a thorny ladyflower. [THR]
· On the dramatic jury this year: Mos Def, director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, The Nativity Story), Film Independent Executive Director Dawn Hudson and Sarah Polley. [THR]
· Sony's newly appointed acquisition team, Adrian Alperovich and Lara Thompson, will make their debuts at Sundance, where they will likely prove their commitment to the job by savagely biting other studio reps to death, Jack-Bauer-style, in pursuit of the distribution rights of any gem they deem to have Little Miss Sunshine potential. [Variety]
· A gallery of some of this year's entries, which starts out fun (Defender and cheerleaders!), then quickly grows depressing with pictures of Abu Ghraib and Adrienne Shelly. [LAT]

· The second night of American Idol is only slightly less huge than the first, pulling in 36.9 million viewers between 8-10 p.m. This thing's ready to burn out any second now, we can feel it. [Variety]
· Actor Matt Dillon is assimilated by the CAA agent-Borg, voluntarily entering their blood-draining embrace after being dazzled by their shiny new Century City headquarters. [THR]
· CBS picks up the 15th and 16th editions of Survivor, which will both air in the 07-08 season. Publicity-attracting concepts for the planned installments haven't yet been announced, but insiders expect a new, human sacrifice element to be added to the tribal council segment during one of the upcoming cycles. [Variety]
· Kyra Sedgwick signs a new deal with TNT that will keep her on The Closer through its seventh season, grant her a producer title, and pay her a reported $250,000-300,000 per episode. For a basic cable show? Really? [THR]
· In news as surprising as American Idol's ratings, Apple sold a lot of iPods over the holidays, solidifying the music player as the leading gift for those who couldn't be bothered to think of something original to give their loved ones. [Variety]