The LAT examines the circumstances surrounding Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent skiing accident in Idaho and subsequent leg surgery (see accompanying cyborg specs). It's a trip no one seemed to know about, like most of his frequent journeys out of state—1 of every 5.6 days in office, they report—terminating in an accident about which the Governor's people are being extremely reticent. It seems our operative in Idaho was on to something, however, as their investigation indicates Schwarzenegger was careening down the hill at reckless speeds of around 0 mph when the femur snapping occurred:

In honor of Gerald Ford, who "died peacefully" yesterday in Rancho Mirage, we revisit this Dana Carvey SNL sketch—probably one of our favorites of all time—in which Tom Brokaw is required to tape news promos covering just about every other possible conceivable cause of death for the former President. It even includes one scenario that makes room for the possibility of Brokaw simultaneously coming out of the closet. "What?" the producer responds to his protests. "One day. You wake up. You like men. Gerald Ford dies, and we're screwed!" We know the feeling. We really do.

· If you can do your best to ignore TMZ's 101 Thinly Veiled Homophobic Adjectives (yes, we get it—he's gay), there are just so many things both simultaneously right and wrong with this chance encounter between Richard Simmons and a jolly green paparazzi giant, we simply had to share.
· Shmuel Tennenhaus, everyone's favorite tribe member and YouTube talking head activist, is calling for an all-out boycott of the next season of The Apprentice. You know what, Shmuel? We're with you! Unless it happens to be on and we're home and bored.
· Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck's 1-year-old daughter, Violet, has been baptized. At the behest of the parents, it took place in a custom made, giant Starbucks to go cup.
· James Brown will be laid out on the stage of the Apollo from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday for fans to pay their last respects. We're going to go out on a limb and rechristen the day after that James Brown Laid Out on the Apollo Stage YouTube Nirvana.
· The script might read "...and he's quiet," but when it's Matt Damon in the role, you know that quiet is going to be a dreamy, thinking man's quiet.
· Are we happy there's a blog devoted entirely to Squid? Why, yes. Yes we are.

Good news, concerned voters and fans of Jingle All The Way alike! It looks as if Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will recover fully from his recent leg-shattering skiing accident, as his surgery was a resounding success. But while ABCNews.com postulates that his broken femur was "likely a result of high speeds rather than weak bones," a Defamer operative nearer to the carnage tells us the word on the Sun Valley street is that Arnold wasn't exactly engaged in a wintry version of alpine Predator when the mishap occurred:

· Tuesday music round-up: The Delta Spirit play Spaceland, Bright Light Fever are at Safari Sams, and feel free to ask DJ AM all about his sneaker collection when he spins tonight at Cinespace Tuesdays.
· "You know [comedian Jay Davis] as the TLC killer on Dane Cook's Tourgasm," says The Laugh Factory website. Actually, we don't, but once again—YouTube to the rescue. Jay hosts "Life of the Party" tonight.
· American Cinematheque screens The Egg and I, starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, at the Egyptian—notable for the screen debut of Ma & Pa Kettle, who once delighted the world with their faulty math skills.

Regular Defamer readers are by now familiar with a certain indie drama whose progress we have been closely following, set to make its debut at the 2007 Sundance festival. What we've been referring to as the Untitled Dakota Fanning Rape Project—both for its preternaturally gifted and precocious star (Dakota Fanning), and the shocking yet Oscar-worthy act of violence at its center (her rape)—finally appears to have settled on a title: Hounddog. In an exclusive interview with Premiere magazine (it doesn't appear to be online yet, but an OhNoTheyDidn't reader was good enough to scan it in), director Deborah Kampmeier talks about her struggles since the details about her script were released to the press: Among other adjustments, she's had to hire someone just to "screen her hate mail"—a job most Hollywood agents traditionally refer to as "an assistant." She also opens up about the shooting of the actual rape:

Sure, we brought you the up-to-the-minute, fully adequite Lindsay Lohan manifestos and Britney Spears cooch-flashing updates, but sometimes it takes a little perspective—like Al Gore showing an auditorium of Chinese meteorology students a slide of spaceship Earth—for us to really appreciate just how far we've come, and how precious our Hollywood ecosystem is. Therefore, in an attempt at making some sense of it all, we present Defamer's Year In Review:
January
· Viacom and CBS go their separate ways, and the golden era of Paramount lot CBS staffer slights is born.
· Remember when Lindsay Lohan still had an "asthma card" to play?
· Angelina Jolie reveals she is heavy with Chosen Child.
· James Frey sits upon a throne of memoirist lies.
· Chad Lowe gets Swank'd.
· Lionsgate starts plotting their Crash Oscars overthrow.
· The Golden Globes tell us all we need to know about where Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe are headed.
· Leif Garrett and Brad Renfro face the music.
· The Colin Farrell sex tape transcripts still crack us up.
· The CW is announced, still seems like a good idea.
· The only thing anyone remembers about Sundance starred Kettle One and strawberries.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and updated several times per week—so send them in often. If we receive 50 more before Friday, we'll have beaten last year's record, and there will almost definitely be cake! 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 Paris Hilton and the family celebrating Christmas in the secluded comfort of the Morels patio at The Grove.

As a quantifiable metric of fame, attempting to procure courtside seats for an NBA game is as good a measure as any. That's the basic premise behind the GQ's "Celebrity NBA Challenge," which pits NBA brand-boosting superstars like The Rock versus their lesser celebrity brethren—Alex Trebek, for example—to see who can score the precious, last minute floor seats; for added fun, the fake flacks also ask if their clients can throw the ball around with the team and sing the national anthem. Some of the results may surprise you:

· The holidays take two biggies from us: Frank Stanton, credited with turning CBS into "the Tiffany network," and the hardest working man in showbiz, James Brown, who was telling friends until the very end that he'd be playing Times Square New Year's Eve. [Variety, THR]
· Dreamgirls took in a healthy $8.7 million on Christmas Day. In a joint announcement with the Association of Chinese Restaurant Owners of America, DreamWorks thanked "all the Jews out there who made this Christmas an unparalleled success!" [Variety]
· The FCC refuses to back down on their Nipplegate fine for CBS, whose lawyers you can be sure have sat down Prince and told him that under no circumstances may he drop his pants to release a thousand white doves come Superbowl half-time this February. [Variety]
· Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined the MPAA anti-pirateers, delivering a statement in which he likened the production of counterfeit DVDs and CDs to "picking someone's pocket or shoplifting." He then handed out T-shirts featuring the campaign logo—a snarling pirate with a DVD eyepatch—which was an image knocked off from a European anti-piracy campaign that everyone really dug. [THR]
· Rupert Murdoch finally dumps his "turd bird," giving Liberty Media his stake in DirecTV in exchange for Liberty's entire stake in News Corp. [THR]

While you were desperately rifling through piles of Banana Republic wrapping tissue searching for the all-valuable gift receipt that would spare you from a fate of itchy sweater hell, year-round Christmas angel Angelina (it's right there in her first name!) Jolie and short-leashed civil partner Brad Pitt were once again focusing their energies on making the world a better place, one Colombian refugee baby at a time:

There won't be any jubilant Hora dancing with Jewish community leaders for the Governor any time soon, as an increasingly accident prone Arnold Schwarzenegger has managed to do some serious damage to his leg after a skiing accident this weekend in Idaho:

Greetings, fellow Time Magazine People of the Year! While the rest of this year's honorees are out tobogganing on picturesque hillsides or sliding their toes between the white sands of an all-inclusive resort, we keepers of the cyber community flame hold steadfast at our posts, lest a single Paris Hilton assflap photograph or trailer mash-up risk slipping through the cracks. Mark is away on vacation, but I shall see you through the next few days—a time of year I have previously referred to as the "taint between Christmas and New Year's," but which I will now amend to include certain neighboring orifices, if you, like me, will spend the majority of it sitting at a computer. Of course, in these dead news days, your individual sightings and tip contributions are required more than ever, and will go directly to help feed and clothe a content-needy associate editor. God bless.

Toast surviving yet another Christmas relatively unscathed—save for that one unfortunate incident in which Grandma's ill-timed offering of a homemade sugar cookie during a particularly strenuous match of Wii bowling resulted in a controller
lodging itself into the base of her skull—with the holiday weekend's box office numbers:
1. Night at the Museum—$30 million
That Night at the Museum performed this well shouldn't come as that big of a surprise: God knows parents weren't going to bring their kids to an actual museum this weekend, where they would be forced to interact with their children for any number of hours, while being required to address questions whose answers may not necessarily have been covered by the exhibits' description plaques. Thanks to Ben Stiller's screen adventures, however, parents could feel secure in knowing their kids' weekend entertainment included valuable educational elements as well—that Teddy Roosevelt had a facility with multiple accents, for example, including "old Jewish man."

· Donald Vs. Rosie: Round 1. Round 2. Round 3 (The make-up sex round.)
· Pageant Sluts Unite!: Miss USA pardoned. MADD's mad at Miss Teen USA. Miss Nevadaaiaaiaiaiaiaiai.
· Everybody wins! We bring you a round-up of every critics' group's year-end list, from Southeast to San Diego.
· Happy Birthday to Sylvester Stallone's uncredited co-writer, who can walk on water, yet still can't manage to nail that second-act montage sequence.
· Judd Apatow celebrates his kid's birthday at Chuck E. Blood.
· Gus Van Santa Claus's swerving sleigh is pulled over.
· A Jewish woman in Hancock Park Adjacent goes candy cane crazy with her holiday decorations.
· Chad Lowe stumbles into the wrong Christmas party; wisely chooses not to stay, get drunk, and yammer on about how much he still loves Hilary.
· The perfect, last-minute gift for the boss who has everything.
· Lindsay Lohan is not going to lie to ya: She really respects the cunts now.
· Joe Barbera leaves this world, and with him, the truth about whether or not Fred from Scooby-Doo was gay.
· Jews are responsible for shoddy condoms, too.
· Brian Atene is not just a Trekkie, but an Apey as well.
· Jake Gyllenhaal accidentally receives Miss Marple's birthday presents.
· Have a very Viacom Christmas! It's the best corporate multiconglomerate time of the year!

Hi, gang! As even the most of godless of Hollywood heathens is well aware, Monday is Christmas, the day when Christians celebrate the birth of the Messiah by giving each other things they bought on sale at Target, drinking enough rum-spiked glasses of eggnog to make spending time with their families seem bearable, and weeping uncontrollably at overrated Frank Capra movies. In recognition of this sacred occasion, we won't be updating on Monday, but posting will resume on Tuesday. In other schedule-related news, I'll be on vacation until January 2nd starting right about...now, but Seth will be sticking around to ensure that no Blackberried Lindsay Lohan manifesto about her plans to enlist Santa Claus in her ongoing image rehabilitation campaign goes uncovered.

Friday
· Music round-up: Jon Brion at Largo; Jeremy Enigk at the Troubadour; and El Vez headlines My Mexican Merry MeX-mas at the Knitting Factory.
· The Sacred Fools Theater presents its fifth annual production of A Mulholland Christmas Carol, a retelling of the Dickens holiday standard, but with L.A. water baron William Mulholland in the part of Scrooge. [via flavorpill]
Saturday
· More music: Slick Rick at the Vine Street Lounge; The Vandeas at the House of Blues; The Oolahs and Gliss at the Knitting Factory.
· The Blind Boys of Alabama (not actually blind, we suspect) put on their Christmas show, Go Tell It On The Mountain, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Sunday
· If you're impressed that A Very Mulholland Christmas is in its fifth year, get ready to have your pointy elf shoes knocked right off your feet: the L.A. County Holiday Celebration at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is holding its 47th annual performance on Christmas Eve. Multicutural Xmas fun for all!

We wanted nothing more in these last few hours before the Christmas break than to report that a legitimate miracle had taken place: That Donald Trump, having been visited by various ghosts of real estate development past, present, and future throughout the night, had awakened in the wee hours soaked in a pool of his own, gilded sweat, and realized that he had made a terrible, terrible mistake. With a yank of the braided velvet rope hanging by his bedside, he'd slide silently off his black satin sheets, careful all the while not to wake a slumbering Melania; he'd then tiptoe onto the solid-gold-and-glass elevator that would bring him to the roof of his spectacular residence, where a "T"-emblazoned helicopter would instantly rush him over to Rosie O'Donnell's home.

Huzzah! Join us in a Very Special Holiday Thank You to this week's sponsors; if not for their unflagging support, we'd be forced to rob Salvation Army Santas to support our debilitating blogging habit. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer, see this page.

· Var's Peter Bart calls out fellow Academy voter Oprah Winfrey for her rule-bending tendency to loudly campaign for her Oscar favorites. An AMPAS spokesman answers Bart's charges about their acceptance of Winfrey's cheerleading by saying, "Shhhh! She's fucking crazy, she'll have us all killed. Let her slobber all over Jennifer Hudson if it makes her happy." [Variety]
· There's something for everyone at this weekend's box office! As long as you want to see Ben Stiller being chased around by animated dinosaur bones, Sylvester Stallone getting beaten up by a guy young enough to be his grandson, or [spoiler alert] Matt Damon getting urinated on while mud-wrestling with naked men. [THR]
Foreign moviegoers declare war on Christmas, staying away from The Nativity Story in the proverbial droves. [Variety]
· Subtitles: Not just for art-house movie nerds anymore. [THR]
Germans moviegoers are expected to ignore Flags of Our Fathers, as they're getting pretty tired of Hollywood reminding them that they lost World War II. [Variety]