· Thursday music round-up: A Global Threat are at the Knitting Factory, One Side Zero play the Roxy, and The Knitters play Safari Sams.
· Did you often find yourself watching Dancing with the Stars, and thinking to yourselves, "Well, sure, Lisa Rinna is impossibly glamorous and spry on her feet, but most of that is accomplished with camera tricks and CGI?" Well, now's your chance to put all your lingering doubts to rest: Dancing with the Stars The Tour, brought to you by SlimFast, lands at the Staples Center tonight, and features all your favorites from three cheeseball seasons, including Rinna, Joey Lawrence, Drew Lachey and Joey McIntyre.
· Nude Ambition, the "nation's first consumer lingerie magazine," is hosting a New Year's celebration at Level 3 Nightclub. There's nothing like downing cocktails while feeling sexy and natural in a flouncy negligee. Cross-dressing discouraged.

We realize not all of you will be out traipsing around your town this coming New Year's Eve, choosing instead to spend your final moments of 2006 in the comforts of your homes with ABC's own Father Time and Baby New Year—i.e. Dick Clark, whom they promise will be "back, live," and his bushy tailed yet meticulously manscaped replacement, Ryan Seacrest. And while we were giddily combing through photographs of the final touches being put upon the famed Times Square ball whose descent will be counted down by millions, it suddenly occurred to us that it was she—that shimmering, totemic orb symbolic of our communal progression—whom Seacrest should have been planting one on all along, and not Teri Hatcher! Congratulations, Ryan: You are the future.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers—the best sighting submitters in the world! We fell far short of the 50 we challenged on Tuesday, so, unfortunately, there will be no cake. Still, we'd be remiss if we did not sweep up the last scraps of celebrity spottings for 2006—no matter how Z-list—in order to start with a clean slate in 2007. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the time you saw Pauly Shore sulking near corned beef.

Come along as we continue on our journey through the year's events, moving into the lazy, balmy months of summer. (We're not really sure why we're working the seasonal theme—it's not like L.A. has any.)
June
· The Chosen One is born.
· Brett Ratner: Irresistible to old Chinese women and Courtney Loves alike.
· Michelle Rodriguez does 4 hours of hard time.
· Warner Bros. starts to get the Gay Fear about their caped wonder.
· People pays $4.1 million for the first shots of Shiloh Nouvel.
· Piven Vs. Dorff.
· Daryl Hannah! You get down from that walnut tree this instant!
· Remember when Matt Lauer was getting heat for just baring his ankles?
· Believe It or Not! 2006 found Jim Carrey having trouble getting his projects greenlit.
· Brian Grazer's brief foray into the singles' scene.
· Aquaman doesn't exist, yet still manages to blow Poseidon out of the water.
· Aaron Spelling: The final stroke.
· Superman Returns. No one seems to care, except Matthew Perry and Darren Star.
· Star Jones gets the ax.
· Tori Spelling: Her heart wrenching last moments, on an Us cover near you!

· The Chicago Film Critics Association decide upon The Departed as this year's best picture, with Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker taking top acting honors. Congratulations: Through the process of critical concensus repetition alone, you have now been brainwashed into believing those two actors will take home an Oscar. [THR]
· The Florida Film Critics Circle also honor The Departed, Mirren and Whitaker, while the Pauline Kael Breakout Award (sponsored by Clearasil) goes to Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls. [Variety]
· The AFI name their "Moments of Significance" for 2006, a sort of Oscars for Hollywood trends, we guess, recognizing such abstract concepts as "Clint Eastwood - A National Treasure," "The Documentary Speaks To The World," and "YouTube Redefines 'The Tube.'" Sadly, "End to Years-Long Battle for Armrest Dominance Over That Guy Sitting Next To You at the Movies" is one Moment of Significance that has yet to see the light of day. [The Envelope]

A reader just told us that WCBSTV.com is running a live feed of the James Brown body viewing at the Apollo. Their streaming seems to be Mac-unfriendly, but any PC users out there wanting to pay the Godfather some last respects—now's your chance!

· Analysis of this year's animated releases reveals that they tend to do better at the box office when another one doesn't open soon after. It's almost as if there was a single audience for these movies—say, parents and their young children. [Variety]
· MTV is looking to expand to the Middle East, signing a deal with Dubai's Arabian Television Network to launch MTV Arabiya. Meanwhile, Tabitha Soren and Kennedy go burqa shopping, hoping no one recognizes them at the open-call VJ auditions. [Variety]
· Bob Yari's Crash lawsuit gets tossed by a Superior Court judge. In other news, Variety's photo editor is clearly not a big fan of the producer. [Variety]
· CBS's CSI, NCIS, and any other series on that network featuring those initials, lead the network to a Christmas week victory, but Deal or No Deal's epic, obnoxiously Yuletide-themed Monday night episode wins NBC that night. [THR]
· Former Mediaweek senior editor and regular contributor Eric Schmuckler, described by colleagues as "the most lovable kvetch I've ever known," died at age 47 from cancer. Sigh. [THR]

Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, along with Frances McDormand and husband Joel Coen, were slumbering at a Marin County inn when a tree crashed into it early yesterday morning, igniting a fire and sending its guests—both celebrity and non—fleeing for their lives. Reports the Marin Independent Journal:

Greetings, friends! Your associate editor here just checking in to make sure your transition into 2007 is as pleasant as possible. Blanket? Cookie? Britney Spears' vagina? Don't hesitate to ask. Mark is still on vacation, possibly readying himself as we speak for the pilgrimage to the Apollo Theater to pay his last respects to James Brown. (But in all probability eating Snickerdoodles and watching Oprah.) In the meantime, we'll be with you today and a half-day tomorrow, after which, you're pretty much on your own. Remember to avoid the deadly path of block-long, speeding Hummersines overflowing with shit-faced revelers wearing those 2007 novelty sunglasses. (Whatever will become of that industry in 2010?) And now that we're on the subject—we're feeling a lack of New Year's Eve spirit. Like, where's the party? Let us know. We're committed to spreading the word.

Realizing that perhaps the best way to get in with the good graces of the lap-dance-servicing community was not to send out a Blackberried memo that might later get forwarded to Page Six in which she described them as "all whores . . . xcept for some obviously!" Lindsay Lohan has committed herself to making amends with the hard working Ladies of the Pole:

When Anne Hathaway, whose funbag-flashing moment in the back of a car provided Brokeback Mountain audience members a brief respite from the steady onslaught of Heath-on-Jake action, recently attempted to toast the holidays at the Gramercy Park hotel, a doorman failed to recognize the star. (We imagine he has since been chained to a rolling AV cart in the hotel's boiler room with multiple copies of The Princess Diaries and Devil Wears Prada.) Luckily, the NY Daily News reports, she was traveling with her husky, hairy guardian angels in tow:

· What do Lady in the Water, Poseidon, The Fountain, and Flushed Away all have in common? We'll give you a hint: It's not water.
· Rosie O'Donnell goes all Def Poetry Jam on Donald Trump's ass.
· Michael Crichton brings all the baby-raping action Scientologists have been going on about to sickeningly detailed life in his new novel.
· Lisa Marie claims there was a conspiracy to cheat her out of a lifetime of Tim Burton's palimony. Even Cherry Vanilla was in on it!
· What was once Joan Crawford's and is now Leeza Gibbons' West Hollywood hideaway can be yours for less than $8 mil.
· Katie Couric's vacation is called short, all because CBS News feels guilty about sticking President Ford's death in the crawl. None of this would have happened if she had just taped it beforehand.

The Best Week Ever blog continues their "10 Best 10 Best Lists of 2006" with #3, The 10 Gayest Moments of 2006. It reads as a pretty hysterical stroll down this year's yellow-bricked memory lane, including such highlights as #9 ("The 6-foot Long Hoagie That is the Jake/Lance/McConaughey Sandwich"), #7's Ryan Seacrest/Teri Hatcher photo-op smooching session ("'Anus-Mouth' has never made more sense in our eyes,") and this write-up of the one movie sure to represent the Rainbow Rebellion at this year's Oscars, Dreamgirls:

Scriptland, the LAT's weekly ode to Hollywood's nebbish, toiling underclass of screenwriters and the (progressively-hotter-the-more-successful-they-get) women who love them, turns their attentions to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. A comic riff on the tortured musician biopic genre—of the sort Spike Lee recently attached himself to—from longtime friends and collaborators Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow, Walk Hard stars John C. Reilly in the title role of the troubled, Buddy Holly-era rocker who probably would have been better off not having outlived the Day the Music Died. Kasdan described their process for creating the film's all-important soundtrack composed of "good songs that are funny within the context of the movie," amazingly without ever once uttering the words, "You know, like in Spinal Tap.":

· Wednesday night music: Prefuse 73 play at the Airliner, Photek is at the Vanguard, and Spaceland offers "Young and Stupid: A Celebration of 20 Years of C86 Twee Pop," with Dave Newton from The Mighty Lemon Drops and members of Aberdeen.
· Depending on where you land on the Clowns: Delightful Merriment Makers or Nightmares of Pure Evil continuum, you'll either love Slava's Snowshow, or...not. At Royce Hall.
· "Glide In Movies" at Pershing Square features ice skating and a screening of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial starting at 7 p.m. Sure, you've seen E.T. before, but you've never seen it while careening into another skater! It's a whole new experience.

While porcupine-becoiffed superproducer Brian Grazer (don't worry—we won't use the headshot) has long been developing a big screen treatment of James Brown's life story with the cooperation of the legend himself, just two days after the singer's death comes a report that Spike Lee has signed on to direct. And although Grazer wasn't necessarily looking for a Hollywood ending, something about Brown hip-gyrating off this mortal coil on Christmas Day makes for a satisfyingly spectacular conclusion to the life of a Soul Messiah:

We alerted you yesterday to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's charity work in Costa Rica, handing out presents to Colombian refugee children. But the flawless philanthropists have no monopoly on good deeds, as celebrities from every letter of the rigid Hollywood caste system came out to help those less needy. A round-up:
· Survivor host Jeff Probst and his girlfriend, former Survivor contestant Julie Berry, spent Christmas serving dinner to patrons of the Wayside Soup Kitchen in Portland, Maine. Just for fun, Probst suggested serving meals to four separate lines divided by race, an experiment soup kitchen officials quickly cancelled after a bearded man in the white line started shouting that the two individuals in the far shorter Asian line were receiving unfairly generous turkey portions. [Canada.com]
· In further New England celebrity charity news, Adam Sandler sent Stephanie and Kevin Hudon, two teenage siblings from New Hampshire suffering with cancer, a hard-to-find Playstation 3 and swag bag, in the hopes that the blowing away of virtual Nazis with high neuro-artificial-intelligence would temporarily take their minds off their troubles. [AP]

Our ongoing recap of the Hollywood year that was continues as we ease into the warmer months of spring. Join us, won't you?
March
· The death of Brokeback jokes.
· Jeremy Piven 2: Electric Boogaloo.
· Anna Nicole goes to Washington.
· Joe Rogan's MySpace flame war: "You're an ugly, fat faced zero, and I'm a famous multi millionaire."
· Worst. Oscars. Ever.
· When Shmuger met Linde.
· Sharon Stone wants to kiss her way to Mideast peace.
· South Park kills Chef in just about the grossest way imaginable.
· Wide World of Assistant Beerpong Tournaments.
· The Roosevelt puts Amanda Scheer Demme and her gang of celebutard hooligans on the street.
· George Clooney declares war on Gawker.
· Ryan Seacrest puts his moves on Teri Hatcher.

· The Library of Congress added 25 titles to the National Film Registry, including Fargo, Groundhog Day, and Blazing Saddles, the last of which you can draw up alphabetically, or by typing in "Movies: Bean-Induced Flatulence." [Variety]
· Eragon is faring much better overseas than it did in North America, while Letters From Iwo Jima has topped the Japanese box office for the third week in a row, proving unless the giant flying monster movie has a "Vs." in the title, the Japanese aren't interested. [Variety]
· Apocalypto has been "stuck in neutral" since its big opening weekend, despite Disney's attempts to re-market it to families with all new subtitles that tell the story of an ancient warrior who needs to get home for Christmas before the evil Santa Mayan Claus can reach into his chest and pull out a beating heart for a lucky little girl or boy. [Variety]
· Samantha Corbin-Miller has been hired as showrunner on Lifetime's series Army Wives, not to be confused with ABC's Football Wives. Yes, 2007 TV is definitely going to be Year of the Woman Defined by Her Relationship to a Man. You go, girl! [THR]
· Elijah Wood will star in Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia's first English-language film, Oxford Murders, saying "I'm delighted to work with Elijah, who undoubtedly has the most powerful eyes in the industry and who is perfect for the part." Sounds like someone has a cruuush. [THR]

With his superannuated former heavyweight champion picture doing plucky business at the box office, a repurposed Sylvester Stallone is proving to have a legitimate shot at the title of Hollywood's Greatest Oldspiration, currently held by ancient producing mystic Robert Evans. But theirs is a long simmering rivalry, which, according to Page Six, began when the notorious ladies' man shared his impressive archive of Polaroid-captured conquests with the actor: