· A pretty damn solid music round-up: Nada Surf (and more importantly, the awesome Rogue Wave) at the Henry Fonda; Supergrass at the Avalon; Dilated Peoples at the House of Blues Sunset.
· AFI hosts a screening of The Silence of the Lambs, the last movie in which we can remember Jodie Foster having a crazy dude's man-seed flung at her (though we still haven't seen Flightplan), at the ArcLight.
· The Sunday Comedy gang from Room 5 show complete disregard for the calendar by putting on a Wednesday night show with Marc Maron, Andy Daly, Paul F. Tompkins, and Anthony Jeselnik.

Earlier today, a Defamer operative watched in appalled horror as entertainment industry etiquette was willfully ignored and famous-type person Elijah Wood was brutally accosted by that most lethal of coffee shop denizens, the sketchy, pitch-happy "producer." Says our scandalized spy:

Even if Brokeback Mountain somehow lets the Best Picture Oscar slip through its rope-calloused-yet-tender fingers, few could deny it has already established itself as movie of the year. While other features reeked of desperately wanting to be talked about Munich and Crash come to mind Brokeback's only agenda appeared to be a desire to tell the sad, quiet story at its core. As a result, it managed to capture our hearts in the process, none more so than the enthusiastic collector who won the shirts auction for just north of 100 grand, likening them to "the ruby slippers of our time.

You have to respect Life & Style's huge set of balls. Their new issue responds to Tom Cruise's official denial of a break-up and Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields' legal saber rattling by extending a defiant middle finger to all who would doubt their truth-spreading network of "insiders." Their website teases this week's story (the cover tag line: "They're acting like a happy couple in public, but in private friends say IT'S GETTING NASTY!") with some dirt about the suspicious couple's recent mage rehab trip to Australia:

After some reflection, Adam Goldberg allowed that the guy in the Ronald McDonald suit might have been genuinely curious about his career when he asked what the actor's been up to since he was Chandler's creepy roomate on Friends, and that lighting him on fire was an impulsive overreaction to a perceived slight.

Could that be the crown prince of Hollywood's swingin' singles scene, Entourage's Jeremy Piven, styled to within an inch of his existence (blazer collar flipped up, if you please) on the cover of Los Angeles magazine's nightlife issue? Why, yes, it is! The interview isn't on their website yet, but should you get your hands on a copy, on page 123 you'll find a treasure of personal philosophies on one of Piven's favorite subjects nightprowling in LA. A sampling:

Fox has revealed its evil plans for what it will do with affiliates stripped of programming when UPN and The WB merge: the creation of a "21st century," "localized," "station-friendly" network called My Network TV (it didn't take long to come up with a name worse than "The CW," did it?) that will finally give Fox a place to dump programming too awful even to plug holes on the parent network. [Variety]
· Aquaman already shitcanned: A "major recasting" turns over the orange tights to Justin Hartley, sending original super-fishboy Will Toale to the unemployment line. [THR]
China takes a stand against the worrying social ill of human-toon miscegenation, banning all animation that shows cartoons cavorting with live-action actors. Plans to publicly steamroll extant copies of Space Jam and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with tanks are still being finalized, however. [Variety]
Chris Rock will star in I Think I Love My Wife, a remake of the French film Chloe in the Afternoon. Clearly making a break with the Head of State era, Rock declared, "I can't wait to make a sophisticated comedy with all the good people at Fox Searchlight." [THR]
In an effort to prevent the continuing Emmy-hogging tyranny of TV shows that people actually watch, the TV Academy will let a "blue ribbon panel" decide the ultimate nominees for the best comedy, drama, and major acting categories. [Variety]

On last night's O'Reilly Factor, your basic cable destination for reasoned debate about hot-button issues in Hollywood, Bill O'Reilly invited famously closeted actor Tab Hunter and onetime onscreen homosexual Harry Hamlin to discuss the industry's post-Brokeback climate. Hamlin explained how he believes his choice to play gay in Making Love crippled his movie burgeoning movie career:

Like Godzilla taking sucker swats at Mothra high above the New York skyline as innocent pedestrians run screaming for their lives, Manhattan's two towering media titans, Donald Trump and Martha Stewart, are embroiled in a gigantic public battle over the blame for the failure of her version of The Apprentice. Martha arguably threw down the gardening gloves first, with comments in the current Newsweek stating that she thought Donald was supposed to be fired at the start of her season: "Having two Apprentices was as unfair to him as it was unfair to me. But Donald really wanted to stay on." But it was Trump's open letter response an unleashed torrent of seething resentment that even makes reference to her crimes that elevated it from a good-natured, competitive spat between friends and into the realm of disturbing personal attack. People reprints it in its entirety, but here are some highlights:

When two gossip-attracting starlets publicly deny that there's a rivalry percolating between them, it's the solemn duty of the tabloids to make sure that if no feud existed previously, one does now:

Daniel Craig Humiliation Week continues, following yesterday's reports that the unpopular new James Bond lost a couple of teeth in his very first fight sequence, with an item in today's NY Daily News claiming that the actor admitted he was incapable of driving Bond's signature vehicle a redesigned Aston Martin because the car is a stick-shift. Meanwhile, Craignotbond.com, your internet home for hilarious Craig bashing, makes a strong case that the actor is perhaps better suited to fill the shoes of any number of Hollywood icons over Agent 007, from Nosferatu to Kramer to that All-American tween take on the great British spy himself: Banks. Cody Banks.

We're relieved to see that proper celebrity sex tape protocol is being followed in the Kid Rock/Scott Stapp double-barrelled blowjob video situation, wherein the offending, contraband footage is shadily obtained by a mysterious "third party," teased with a preview clip on the internet, and then quickly suppressed by one of the famous parties' legal team. Rock's lawyers performed an incredibly valuable public service yesterday by obtaining a temporary order to stop the sale or distribution of the video, a crucial first step towards ensuring that none of us ever get to see Rock and frequently leather-panted former Creed singer Stapp being blown by a small team of strippers in a mobile home. It's bad enough that curiosity got the better of us and we submitted ourselves to the profound psychic scarring [SPOILER ALERT: Just stop reading here, you'll thank us later] of watching one of the girls kiss Stapp's nipple and hearing him arrogantly proclaim "It's good to be the king," a moment of sexual ruination arguably surpassed only by Fred Durst's infamous exhortation to his sex-tape partner to "touch my balls and my ass."

· It's been a tough day for the new 007, who lost a couple of teeth, and then had some angry Bond fans with too much time on their hands launch an online jihad against him for his perceived failure to properly fill the iconic tuxedo.
· Harrison Ford on why he made Firewall: "I like to play a real person who has a real life and family. I just thought it would be a good movie for an audience to enjoy." We admire him for keeping the more personal reasons, like the rising cost of helicopter fuel and the fact that Calista Flockhart demands a new, solid-gold pony every day as a gift, to himself.
· Blogging.la got a nice facelift.
· TVGasm, as always, asks the tough questions. Today: What if your favorite informercial was actually about a penis instead of an amazing folding ladder?
· Kissing Madonna seems to have been good for Christina, but may have ended Britney Spears' career.
· The only thing cuter than gay Lego cowboys is the tiny sheep they tend. [via BoingBoing]

The Envelope gives us our first look at this year's Oscar set, an over-the-top concoction featuring columns supporting nothing, flanked by giant white seashells, and crowned by a golden, cursive "Oscar" in what appears to be cake-icing font. Oscar set design veteran Roy Christopher explains:

Why are we so amused by the sight of a celebrity returning to her vehicle and finding a little gift from Beverly Hills Parking Enforcement tucked under her windshield wiper? Unfortunately, any petty thrill (and oh yes, we are petty) we temporarily derive from believing that Fate has delivered a karmic paper-cut to a flawlessly manicured finger is incredibly fleeting, supplanted by the certainty that the poor meter maid who dared deliver the slightest disappointment to one of our anointed was later crushed by a runaway Hummer for her careless insolence.

Starbucks continues its steady, overly caffeinated drip into the Hollywood game, with news that the coffee and public loitering facilities chain is moving some of their employees to the LA area in hopes of generating more opportunities for promotable entertainment tie-ins:

· The Greg Proops Chat Show returns to Largo with a terrifying vengeance with a line-up of Margaret "Ask Me About The Psychic Damage ABC Inflicted On Me" Cho, Greg "Ask Me About What Oprah Said About My Book" Behrendt, and musical genius Jon Brion.
· Novelist Jonathan Ames will read from I Love You More Than You Know at 826LA. Ten bucks to get in, but you can hardly get a Heineken for that on the westside these days.
· Tuesday night music rundown: Les Savy Fav with The Hold Steady at Avalon; Cheap Trick at the House of Blues on Sunset; Becky (featuring, of course, Rebecca from The Real World: Seattle, if you feel you need to gawk at someone from the TV) at Spaceland.

We'd like to welcome all visitors to the fine city of Los Angeles, a town so consumed by its history as the entertainment capital of the world that it recreates a classic B-movie disaster scenario each day of the week for the benefit of our tourists. If you enjoyed yesterday's dramatic blob attack downtown, make sure you spend tomorrow on the Walk of Fame, where you'll have a stunning view as a number of Hollywood's landmarks are vaporized by Martian spaceships that curiously resemble huge, spinning paper plates.

No amount of weeping was going to save Lucyna Turyk-Wawrynowicz, the sticky-fingered maid who relieved Robert De Niro and Candace Bergen of tens of thousands of dollars in valuables, from the righteous sting of celebrity justice. A judge denied her tearful request to be sent home to Poland, instead slapping her with one to three years in jail:

The web-enabled stalkerazzi at TMZ.com staked out Hollywood Boulevard, and after untold man-hours spent monitoring the comings and going of clubgoers, have finally blown the lid off one of the nightlife industry's dirtiest and best-kept secrets: Underage celebrities frequent establishments where alcohol is served. In addition to a (shocking!) photo of 18-year-old Jesse McCartney clutching a Corona (likely alcohol content: 4.5 percent), the site has (jaw-dropping!) video of some of your favorite teen stars brazenly patronizing bars: