· Paramount hands over its Star Trek movie franchise to JJ Abrams for a resurrection, who will write, produce, and direct (with a host of his Lost and M:i3 cohorts) a Trek prequel. Abrams, respectful of Trekkie devotion, plans to adapt this piece of fan art into the story of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock's early, experimental days at Starfleet Academy. [Variety]
· And in other JJ Abrams-related news, Alias and Lost producer Jesse Alexander signs a two-year overall deal with NBC Universal TV Studios. [THR]
· Hollywood NepotismWatch: Ron Howard will direct The Look of Real, and "hopes" that the movie will star his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard. Yeah, we think we like the kid's chances of getting the gig. [Variety]
· Gilmore Girls showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino leave Gilmore Girls after Warner Bros TV refuses to play ball on a new contract as the show shifts to The CW for its probable last season. [THR]
·The Lifetime Network enables Shannen Doherty to become professionally bitchy, signing her up for a reality series in which viewers can hire the actress to dump their boyfriends or terrorize other people in their life. Yes, for real. We can't wait. [Variety]

Wherein we invite our readers to mentally keel-haul themselves on the front of humpy E! gossip buccaneer Ted Casablanca's pirate ship by guessing the identity of his weekly blind item. Today, we're treated to one of the only activities more common than starlets blowing rails in nightclub bathroom stalls or supposedly straight actors blowing twinks in nightclub bathroom stalls: a musician getting laid on a tour bus. Assume the position for One Randy 'n' Rockin' Blind Vice:

ABC is once again handing over a chunk of its Friday night to Tom Cruise, following up last week's Diane Sawyer Primetime interview with a 20/20 special tonight on the actor's true little darling, the upcoming M:i3. Miracle Baby talk was inevitable, as Cruise describes the experience of new fatherhood:

Almost too predictably for a movie that prides itself on its gut-churningly realistic reenactment of one of the most horrific events in recent history, one of United 93's stars is being denied entry into the U.S. to see some of his best terrorist work at the New York premiere next week:

The Franklin Avenue blog stumbled upon a curious little feature on local news station KNBC's website: a slideshow of 49 celebrity Scientologists, presented in alphabetical order, and without any explanation of their involvement with L. Ron Hubbard's happy little family—just names and pictures. The big players are all represented, (hello Tom, Kirstie, Travolta, and heavy-handed, Oscar-winning writer/director Paul Haggis!), but perhaps the most interesting part of the slideshow is the "former Scientologists" section at the end of the presentation, featuring Emilio Estevez, Brad Pitt, Kate "Mrs. Steven Spielberg" Capshaw, Demi Moore, and Jerry Seinfeld. We don't think any of them were ever fully commissioned deckhands on the Freewinds; they probably completed a course or two, wandered into the wrong room during the Celebrity Centre's famous brunch, or in the case of Pitt, put up with Juliette Lewis' e-meter talk just to get laid.

· We give it about a week before Samuel L. Jackson takes his first meeting for Dogs In A Pipe. [via TVGasm]
· The Corporate Casual blog messes with some spammers working a deaf child adoption scam. Sadly, the promised kids never arrive.
· "Nicole Kidman's foot hurts. A podiatrist paid a house call on the Oscar winner, who is staying in the East End." Rush & Molloy bravely face a slow news day without somehow blaming Tom Cruise's Miracle Baby for Kidman's foot pain.
· Melissa Etheridge and her partner are pregnant again, but this time they opt for old-fashioned, anonymous sperm instead of aging musician seed.
· Becoming a teen hearththrob is a far more intensive undertaking than we'd ever imagined.

Brad Pitt gets to combine two of his favorite hobbies—architecture, and doing stuff that will impress Angelina Jolie—in a competition he's spearheading that challenges designers to come up with innovative and feasible plans to rebuild New Orleans:

With a prolonged and strenuous fake pregnancy behind her, Katie Holmes can finally focus on the next step outlined in her billion-year personal services agreement: her rapidly approaching marriage to contractual soulmate Tom Cruise. TMZ claims to have the exclusive! wedding dress! scoop! courtesy of a personal training company that has absolutely nothing to gain by spreading the word about its alleged employment by Holmes:

· We don't mean to insult your bong-attacking bonafides by mentioning this, but today is 4/20, the Constitutionally recognized national holiday which mandates that all adults get really, really high on "the pot" and eat their weight in Funyuns. If that doesn't sound like enough of a plan for you, LA.com has put together a guide to give your day more structure.
· You can easily attend the following while really, really high: Judd Apatow presents Fast Times at Ridgemont High at the Skirball.
· Getting high totally optional for seeing these live shows: What I Like About Jew (the name alone warrants a mention) at Tangier; Maria Taylor at the Echo; The Stills at The Troubadour.

• Gun safety vid: Jason 90210 Priestley and cartoon eagle [BoingBoing]

Sometimes "Online Only" denotes bonus materials specially developed for the internet, a now-vital distribution platform for the networks. Other times, as in the case of the almost simultaneously premiered and canceled Celebrity Cooking Showdown, it means "we spent million of dollars on this shit, but it's still not good enough for us to waste Bravo airtime we're using for Blow Out reruns, and we gotta dump it somewhere."

A Defamer operative slipped us this brief report about the birthday party Paris Hilton threw the other night for Greek shipping moneybags Stavros Niarchos at her swingin' heiress pad, during which some drunken shenanigans tested the structural integrity of one of the house's celebuskank amenities:

Perhaps the single most debated Hollywood brainteaser since "Hey, what the hell happened to Helen Hunt?", the etymological origin and significance of the Cruise child's name, Suri, has been the focus of near Talmudic levels of scholarship in the days since her birthing. We therefore update our initial Suri analysis with an appendix:

Sitcom producers all over town will be relieved to discover that the California Supreme Court upheld the no-dead-baby-rape-joke-too-foul sanctity of the writers' room today, ruling that the Friends staff was merely performing their duties when they speculated about the contents of Courteney Cox's uterus, discussed their personal views on the necessity of foreplay, or pitched out unorthodox ideas for Joey's day job:

· Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antionette, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation, Richard "Donnie Darko" Kelly's Southland Tales, Pedro Almodovar's Volver, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel all land in competition at Cannes, while hack-helmed, big-budget blockbusters Da Vinci Code and X-Men: The Last Stand appear just for the free trip to France. [Variety]
· Mick Jagger digs deep to find a piece of his soul he hasn't already sold, then offers it to ABC in exchange for a role in a sitcom pilot. [THR]
· Suspicious that the folks at CAA must know about a secret warehouse full of fresh babies somewhere in Century City, ICM follows the juggernaut toddler-gobbling agency out of Beverly Hills and into new office space in the MGM building [Variety]
· KristieAnne Reed (not a typo, there's no space in her first name as far as we can tell) is promoted to executive VP of Bruckheimer TV. "KristieAnne is one of the brightest and most talented executives I've had the pleasure of working with," said Jerry Bruckheimer, who then brutally murdered her as a tie-in for a planned CSI episode taking place in Hollywood, defying his forensic detective stars to connect him to the slaying. [THR]
· Legendary Pictures is developing a live-action film adaptation of Paradise Lost, which will be reimagined as a romantic comedy between Adam and Eve in hopes of attracting Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon as stars.. [Variety]

Hollywood thought it had a good thing going with Julia Roberts: They gave her more money than any other actress on the planet, she gave them a wall of teeth and a decent opening weekend. But somewhere along the way, we lost her to her to a series of nagging instincts: first, maternal, and now, the "serious artist" that convinced her to star in a Broadway play, which premiered last night. The reviews were not kind. Come back, Julia. There's always a place at the table for you in Oceans Umpteen. A bad review round-up:

Variety reports that Lindsay Lohan, who recently worked alongside Meryl Streep in a Prairie Home Companion, is once again wrapping herself in the career-legitimizing insulation of an Oscar-winning castmate, signing on to star in Garry Marshall's Georgia Rule with Jane Fonda, the story of "a rebellious young woman who has a dysfunctional relationship with her mother and is sent to spend a summer with her grandmother." But will Lohan heed her ostensible mentor's advice? We imagine that any rapport between the two actresses will quickly be eroded the first time that Fonda, no stranger to youthful indiscretion herself, walks in on Lohan as she violently coughs up reminders of the previous night's hijinks, and offering to hold her young charge's hair, is rebuffed with, "Listen, grandma, I don't need your help, OK? I've been doing this since I was, like, 12."

Ho to the hip-hop stars Karinne Steffans had no shortage of conquests to write about in her tell-all memoir, Confessions of a Super Vixen, but one in particular always stood out. Ironically, he was the unblingiest of all: Bill Maher. Feel free to reach for the sickness bag conveniently located behind your monitor as your mind fills in the naked-Maher-having-sex blanks:

In an unexpected collision of players from the Payola Six scandal and the Anthony Pellicano Wiretapping Trial of the Century (yes, we must: "Hey, you got your eavesdropping private dick in my extorted supermarket billionaire!" "No, you got your extorted supermarket billionaire in my eavesdropping private dick!"), today's NY Times reports that Hollywood PI Pellicano tried to shake down Ron Burkle (you know him as "the rich guy who bravely refused to pay protection money to Page Six freelancer Jared Paul Stern") to the tune of $100,000 to $250,000, claiming that erstwhile Most Powerful Man in Hollywood Michael Ovitz had hired the detective to dig up dirt on Burkle. Ovitz's lawyer was quick to poo-poo the Pellicano story, asking, "Who are ya gonna believe, the rat who listens in on phone calls, or my client, an upstanding member of the weasly former superagent community?" Reports the Times:

Welcome to our morning attempt to wrap and/or consume the seemingly endless pieces of chocolate insanity passing along the conveyor belt of Tom Cruise and Miracle Baby news: