Blogging Bravo executive Andy Cohen's new web-based kaffeeklatsch, Watch What Happens, premiered last night after a particularly dramatic episode of Top Chef, in which misunderstood foam-making genius Marcel Vigneron was [spoiler!] overpowered by unfortunately named fellow contestant Cliff Crooks in a forced-head-shaving prank gone horribly wrong (in that Marcel's Wolverine do emerged relatively intact). Instantly, Cohen—until now a notoriously reclusive, outspoken voice of the blogowaves—was catapulted into the upper echelons of video podcast notoriety, thusly bringing him one step closer to his goal of mainstream celebrity, and possibly even becoming the new face of Lancôme.

Less than 10 days after Heaven's Executive Producer beset the sleepy beachside town of Malibu with a conflagration that consumed the homes of our most cherished, late-70s sitcom ditzes, He once again expressed his displeasure with the community by blanketing it with a suffocating layer of frozen precipitation. Above: Upon experiencing the "snow" previously experienced only on Rockefeller Center Christmas specials or brief ski excursions to Mammoth, confused MILFs pull their Lexus SUVs to the side of the road to allow their children some unscheduled playtime with the foreign substance, willfully ignoring that the unexpected snowfall is a clear indication that God will soon initiate the long-awaited tectonic shift that will send Malibu sliding into the Pacific, probably while its shifting coast is pelted by a hail of flaming frogs.

Folks from communications team just came by with the most outrageous request of the rotation: Alec Baldwin called...He asked if they could send down some "GE items" to put on his desk on the set of the TV show "30 Rock" so it looks more "GE." You gotta be kidding me with this stuff.

Network presidents tasked with counterprogramming American Idol's 37 million viewers (a job further complicated by the Mandatory 'Idol" Viewership Act For Citizens 18-34 just passed by the newly Democrat-controlled Congress under heavy lobbying by News Corp.) find themselves with precious few practical options for combating the Nielsen juggernaut; those brave enough to resist the easy out of simply scheduling two hours of test-patterns in their Idol-opposing timeslot and then splattering their brains on the windows of their corner offices really have only one reliable strategy for surviving their Sisyphean labor: burying their heads in the warm sands of total denial. TV Week's Critical Eye TCA blog notes how NBC's Kevin Reilly is dealing with the Idol problem:

Despite a heartfelt plea by Lindsay Lohan's publicist to respect her star client's privacy on the occasion of her much-anticipated, proactive decision to check herself into a local rehabilitation facility, many media outlets persist with probing into the adequicy-seeking actress's life during this difficult time. A round-up of the first wave of reports:

· Top Chef's chefs don't seem to be huge fans of host Padma Lakshmi. Can't they see how hot she is, and that makes her feelings on anything automatically valuable?
· A story we didn't give enough of a shit about to mention earlier, but will happily dispense of with a day-ending link: Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz's Post-Globes Spat.
· Death by Camera went through the considerable trouble of digging up the MySpace pages of last night's American Idol contestants, so make sure you reward their effort by having a look.
· Paramount might want to think about retitling Letters from Iwo Jima if they release it in China, unless they think the Chinese would be interested in something called Toilet Paper from Sulfur Island.

As part of yesterday's TCA press tour event, TV critics were bussed over to the set of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, where they were granted some face time with series creator Aaron Sorkin in his behind-the-scenes-at-a-distressingly- serious-minded-sketch-comedy-show environment. When asked to comment on a recent LAT piece claiming that comedy writers don't seem to be fans of the show, the beleaguered showrunner took the opportunity to decry the paper's transparent anti-Sorkin agenda, revealing that his research uncovered the shocking fact that some of his critics might be—audible gasp!—unemployed. Recounts The Oregonian's TV critic on his TCA blog:

We realize many of you lead busy and somewhat fulfilling lives, and, despite how much you might have wanted to, that it was simply unrealistic to drop everything in order to attend Madame Tussauds Las Vegas's premiere of their brand new wax likenesses of Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell. This gallery of photos from the event, however, provides the next best thing to being among the first to witness the unveiling of the greatest single paraffin-related endeavor for the American Idol stars since the two celebrated the premiere of their blockbuster show's sixth season by booking themselves into the W's Bliss Spa for a day of full-body depilation and pampering.

In a development that will shock only certain tribes of Amazonian rainforest primitives whose glossy magazine subscriptions have lapsed in the New Year, depriving them of the tale of the starlet's miraculous recovery from imaginary-appendectomy surgery, Us Weekly reports that Lindsay Lohan has finally decided to get serious about becoming a fully adequite member of sober Hollywood, entering rehab earlier this afternoon:

· Music round-up: Patrick Park at the Hotel Café; Cut Chemist at Safari Sam's; Winston Jarrett at the Echo.
· The Sponto Gallery in Venice screens Steppenwolf, with director Fred Haines on hand to discuss his "psychedelic adaptation" of the Herman Hesse novel (i.e., clue you in to what substances he might have been on while shooting it).
· At Vroman's Bookstore, Heidi Baker and Eden Jarrin sign Be Jane's Guide to Home Empowerment, their book about how they learned to love the nail gun and seize back control of their home-improvement fates from professional contractors.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the time Jason Bateman's gay dog mounted your friend's bi-curious daschund on Runyon Canyon.

After yesterday's wall-to-wall orgy of Golden Globes coverage, we've been resisting a return to the ceremony, hoping to avoid a flashback of the nightmares we suffered of being suffocated by Ken Davitian's Best Supporting Anus that might be induced by further references to Sacha Baron Cohen's victory speech. But we think that our Globes-free morning has probably liberated us from that hairy, strangling sphincter's grip on our unconscious mind, so we can now share this exchange overheard at the event by The Envelope's Kudos Crasher, in which two of show business's most accomplished egotists narrowly averted engaging in a tie-breaking dick-measuring contest after reaching a stalemate on a brief Walk of Fame placement showdown:

· The Academy revealed its shortlist for foreign-language Oscar: 9 films, including Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's (fine, we like typing his name) The Lives of Others, Pan's Labyrinth, and Volver. Apocalypto and Letters From Iwo Jima were excluded for being domestic productions. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu was excluded as part of the Academy's ongoing Criminally Overlooked Foreign and/or Documentary Submissions campaign. [Variety]
· Cautiously waiting for Golden Globes fever to die down lest it siphon some of the enthusiasm from their own honors, the St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Assn. Awards finally announced their winners. The Departed took best picture, the Mirren-Whitaker one-two combo we've all but inked into our Oscar ballots triumphs again, and Jennifer Hudson earns another boost to her self-confidence with her win for best supporting actress. [Variety]
· With the Globes question now factored in, here's a look at how the Oscar race is shaping up. This analysis names Dreamgirls, The Departed, The Queen, Babel, and Little Miss Sunshine the odds-on favorites for a best picture nomination, with outside shots for Letters From Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers. [AP]

Good news! Our first attempt at inducing you to submit and/or vote on slogans that will at some future date be slapped on the front of a Defamer-themed t-shirt available for purchase in the Gawker Shop was such a success that we're going to ask you to return to the submitting/voting fray once again. After the jump, you can view all the slogans currently in play, or offer new ones (remember, you can only donate your creative powers once per half hour) for evaluation by a jury of your peers, who undoubtedly find their own exhaustion-themed contribution far more worthy than the cocaine-inspired creation you dreamed up while blowing a rail in the LAX (club or airport, we don't judge) bathroom last night. Get ready to prop yourself up with a satisfying "I'd Buy!" click, then fight back against their obviously ego-driven blindness with a highly prejudicial "No Way" vote-down by following the pretty "Continued" graphic below.

• T R Knight [YouTube via Towleroad]

· Kicked in the ass by the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, the MPAA is trying to "demystify" the movie ratings system, making ratings rules public on its web site and disclosing previously guarded information about the composition of its shadowy Classification & Rating Administration. Also: they'll introduce a new way to warn parents that certain R-rated movies contain too many pairs of exposed breasts to ever be viewed by impressionable children. [Variety]
· After wasting valuable pre-production time looking for a "Gwyneth Paltrow type" to play a supporting role in the upcoming Iron Man movie, Marvel Entertainment decides to throw enough money at the real deal to get Paltrow to consent to play a superhero's personal assistant. [THR]
· Embracing its corporate mandate to get cheaper in the first hour of primetime, NBC orders six episodes of celebrity improvisation series Thank God You're Here; to balance its responsible order, president Kevin Reilly plans to announce he's given an Aaron Sorkin-penned drama set behind the scenes at a celebrity-improv comedy show a four-season pick-up. [Variety]
· In further NBC pick-up news, the networks gives The Office, My Name Is Earl, and Law & Order: The Sex Victims One full-season orders for next year. [THR]
· Fox picks up 11 episodes of the reality show When Women Rule the World, in which 12 attractive women are given a society to run, and get to trade insufficiently productive man-slaves for supplies crucial to the expansion of their Amazonian utopia. Fox president Peter Liguori calls the series "an important opportunity to explore the societal implications of allowing a dozen hot, drunk chicks to order around a bunch of shirtless out-of-work actors." [Variety]

Tailspinning poptard Britney Spears has not been making the greatest choices lately, having most recently ordered her accountants to fold the portion of her budget reserved for miscellaneous baby needs into the newly established $40,000-A-Night Vegas Suite for Private Time With My New Actor/Model/Soulmate Fund. But could Spears, whose mythically potent fertility has inspired primitive cultures as far as the Amazon to carve her image out of limestone and rub the statuette's belly to enhance their reproductive chances, have gotten herself knocked up again? The Scoop, noting a report from In Touch Weekly, presents the evidence:

The moment that hit-starved Fox executives have been anxiously awaiting is finally here: the first overnight American Idol Nielsens, huge enough to erase the bitter memories of a dozen canceled OJ confession specials or failed sitcoms. The sixth season premiere of America's favorite talent show of the damned drew a (preliminary) average of 37.3 million viewers, and earned an 18-49 rating unseen since The One Where Chandler Takes Out His Pals And Then Turns The Gun On Himself (well, that's the way we like to remember it). Var offers perspective on the staggering opening night numbers:

Perhaps not wanting the last word in Grey's Anatomy FaggotGate (née ChokeGate, but no one cares about the Patrick Dempsey component anymore) to be Isaiah Washington's Golden Globes denial that he ever angrily uttered the slur that drove T.R. Knight from the closet or castmate Katherine Heigl's defiant offer to "throw down" on her offended best friend's behalf, Knight will make a stop on Ellen DeGeneres' couch today to officially call bullshit on Washington's version of the story. In the preview clip on the show's website, Knight unambiguously says, "He referred to me as a faggot...it's such an awesome word, isn't it?" Unfortunately for Knight, even this clarification of the controversy will probably provide Washington, so proud of not hiring a "great shiny publicist" to manage the controversy (that's right, "I love gay. I wanted to be gay. Please let me be gay." was all his), another ill-advised opportunity to explain himself; expect a statement from the actor later today finally admitting that he used the word, but that he meant it "only in the most awesome possible way."

While this just-discovered video of American Idol judge and serial technical difficulty victim Paula Abdul giving an interview to a Fox Dallas affiliate's morning show is decidedly lighter on the slurry, incoherent, and fidgety delights that made her recent Seattle and San Francisco appearances instant classics of the "What the hell is she on?" genre, it does have a special moment in which Abdul closes her eyes for a full six seconds, prompting her concerned inquisitor to ask the subject if she's a little "sleepy." At the conclusion of the interview, the nodding-off footage is replayed and the matter is turned over for consideration by the local morning show tribunal, who after being informed that "the producers" cleared the interview with the explanation that Abdul was "tired," offer their opinions in between fits of uncomfortable laughter, ranging from "Wow...I've never been that tired! The last time I was that tired I was asleep!" to "Obviously, she was a little [finger quotes] 'out of it'" to "Did she have the flu or something maybe?" We commend "the producers" for authorizing the clip to air, allowing audiences to decide on their own if Abdul's unexpected power-nap was merely the product of junket exhaustion, or the sudden metabolizing of the Klonopin-and-wheatgrass smoothie with which the Idol judge begins each grueling day of publicity obligations.