Variety had news of the deal a couple of weeks ago, but today the E! network officially announced its multifaceted pact with Ryan Seacrest, a clear signal that the channel is on its way towards the cessation of all non-Seacrest-related programming:

Sure, cheery manifestos touting "Creative Excellence" and "Reinvention" are nice, but any CEO worth his weight in stock options knows that the only real way to ease the transition of a corporate schism is to lubricate the path to acceptance with a delicious ice cream treat. We've also received word of free Krispy Kremes, Jamba Juice, and a coffee cart on the Paramount lot this morning, which no doubt helped employees mask the sickly butterflies of impending "corporate overhead" reductions with pleasant sugar and caffeine buzzes.

If the movie studios could somehow reproduce for a mass market the common Los Angeles-area experience of attending the local multiplex in the presence of our favorite celebrities, perhaps the inevitable, lonely backslide into a DVD-based home-viewing reality could be forestalled even longer. Over the weekend, a reader delighted in the antics of one Christian Slater, an actor most recently seen tumbling ass-over-widow's-peak off a roof at Paris Hilton's party:

This morning, newly minted CEOs Tom Freston and Les Moonves helped chairman/skeletal executive presence Sumner Redstone ring the New York Stock Exchange's opening bell (gently, of course, lest Redstone's fragile bones splinter from the force of the resulting sound waves) to commemorate the official split of Viacom into the New Viacom and CBS Corp. The always exuberant Freston was so excited by the creation of his new media kingdom that he rushed back to the office and dashed off a manifesto defining it for all of his subjects, whose stated "key values" of Creative Excellence, Reinvention, Global, Diversity and Inclusion, and Social Commitment and Ethics should ease the paranoia about DreamWorks-related layoffs at Paramount and soothe the sting of rival Moonves's instant five-percent stock price jump. Said Freston in a company-wide e-mail:

· Looking back on the scorched earth of its primetime schedule, NBC has bravely embraced the new iTunes frontier, where its programming now "dominates." Soon, however, their momentum may stall when a misguided promotional plan is launched encouraging potential The Office and My Name Is Earl viewers only to buy the shows during a one-hour "Must Download TV" window on Thursday nights. [Variety]
· Oh, yeah: The Chronicles of Narnia knocked King Kong from atop the box office mountain over the weekend, although by a very slim margin. [THR]
· Woody Allen's recent love affair with London and Scarlett Johansson may already be over, as the director will shoot a film in Spain using international and Spanish actors. [Variety]
· EchoStar dumps Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Networks from its Dish Network satellite TV system, possibly sending the troubled channels into rebound relationships with initially alluring, but ultimately abusive, partners who will only exacerbate their already troubling eating disorders. [THR]
· Paramount Pictures hires The Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky to write an Animal House/Fast Times at Ridgemont High/American Pie hybrid (the plot is top secret, apparently) for our pals at CollegeHumor.com. [Variety]

Despite nearly a year's worth of hand-wringing in the media about 2005's five-percent-ish downturn at the box office (commonly referred to as The Slump, and accompanied by the sound of air-raid sirens), the business appears healthy enough overall; most studio executives haven't found themselves the victims of a movie-watching paradigm shift that would send them scrambling to sell their Lexus SUV's to meet their monthly coke bills just yet. Today's LAT writes off the supposedly apocalyptic effects on the industry of last year's "blip," but we're still reminded that the hysteria caused by a year of Aeon Fluxes and Stealths still claimed some high-profile victims:

Given that onetime hard-working actress Gwyneth Paltrow's baby-hampered theatrical output in 2005 was limited to Proof, one of the little movie darlings the Weinsteins quietly suffocated with a pillow before leaving Miramax for their own company, the only news coming out of Camp Paltrow involved either political musings or semi-veiled public threats of violence against those who might dare to shoot photography-retardant daughter Apple. Still, our appetite for Gwynnie-related news is undiminished, and so the desperate celebrity-obsessed press temporarily sates us by shoveling this tidbit about potential Paltrow birthing practices into our gaping maw:

Before we move on to today's news (and before the Reaper harvests another fresh soul of minor fame to complete his greedy Celebrity Rule of Three), we note the recent passing of actor Patrick Cranshaw, best known to a generation of frat boys as Blue (as in: "You're my boy, Blue!), Old School's lovable octogenarian pledge. Cranshaw was 86, sending us groping for a lesson besides the standby Hollywood admonition to "die young and leave a pretty corpse." This is all we've got: If you're Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson's KY-wrestling tag-team partner at the Playboy Mansion, you become immortal; grapple slathered in that same lubricant in a Luke Wilson movie, and your days on this earth are numbered.

It happens every time I take a few "me days" away from Defamer around the holidays: After a week spent emptying a duffel bag full of five-dollar bills at the finest Tijuana donkey show I can find with the help of the first street urchin I catch trying to pick my pocket, reality sets in, and existential questions nibble at the edges of my rapidly smoothing brain. Is this really any more fulfilling than my day job? What would my parents say if they knew that the "business trip" that made me miss Christmas involved twenty-five cent margaritas and gawking at the obscene deployment of ping pong balls? How much longer can I convince the concerned waitress that the blood stains caked into my Santa suit are from harmless nosebleeds, and not from a face-first collapse onto the unforgiving surface of a trash-strewn alley each morning? Eventually, the answer to each question becomes clear, and the realization that I could be having an analogous amount of head-clearing fun at any number of trendy nightclubs on Hollywood Boulevard (albeit with a larger duffel bag jammed with a higher denomination of currency) finally gives me the inner strength to begin the punishing walk back to Los Angeles, back to this computer.

· Eva Longoria spreads her own special brand of holiday anthrax cheer wherever she goes!
· Kevin Federline's website launches, and, predictably, blows. (Blows Britney's bandwidth, mind you.)
· Brad "The Ax" Grey didn't earn his nickname for nothing.
· Uma Thurman carefully looks both ways, then throws her child into oncoming traffic. (Well, not quite, but the big weekend's almost here and we can't be bothered to spend the time piecing it back together.)
· Peter Jackson must be so touched at how well his movies bring people together.
· Wow! It's 2006, and you're home. Alone. Watching Carson Daly. (SFX: GUNSHOT)
· The Short Stop is chock full of celebrity goodness!
· The beautiful people. The beautiful people.
· Mike Myers and his wife call it quits. Why didn't we see the signs?!
· Those durned South Park kids are at it again!
· That guy from that movie will be sorely missed. So will the dude from those commercials.
· Well, that's it! I'm outta here hopping a red eye to NYC. As I mentioned earlier, Monday we're off, Mark returns Tuesday, and I'll be back Thursday. Whatever you end up doing, have fun, make it safe, and see you in 2006! -S.

· Watch Fergie pee herself into 2006 at Giant Village. This huge party will take over six city blocks downtown, with six stages featuring, among others, Black Eyed Peas, Death Cab for Cutie, The Flaming Lips, John Digweed, Miguel Migs, Christopher Lawrence and The Crystal Method. And why worry about driving: the Sheraton, the Westin Bonaventure and the Hilton Checkers all have rooms available for partygoers.
· Together as One has DJs Paul Van Dyk and Mark Farina spinning at the LA Sports Arena.
· Marc Almond, Adult., DJ Carlos D. of Interpol and Clearstatic perform at the New Year's Eve Experience at the El Rey.
· Miss Kitty hosts a New Year's Eve Ball at the Dragonfly with special appearance by the Suicide Girls.
· The homos can catch Debra Cox at the Hollywood Palladium, with DJ Manny Lehman.

We must admit, we have yet to see King Kong. It's playing by our house at the Vista theater, but every time we consider that 3-hour running time, we suddenly think of a couple errands we need to run first. Apparently, we aren't the only ones with those concerns, but one intrepid audience member has thought of a novel way to maximize his leisure time allotment:

Stare closely for a moment at the list below. What do these seemingly random things have in common? Oh, you are so cute why yes, they are all singularly cool, fascinating, desirable and pleasant smelling. But they are also Defamer advertisers, and for that, we give them our deepest gratitude. Oooh...they make us feel brand new...If you'd like to make us feel brand new, too, everything you need to know is right here.

· Just to give you an idea of how suck-ass a year Sony had, its top earning releases of 2005 were Hitch and Are We There Yet?, two movies we literally could not be paid to sit through. [Variety]
· 5,798 love-letters to Brokeback Mountain Oscar ballots were mailed out yesterday. Is it sharing too much if we tell you we've had a long standing fantasy of doing it with two PricewaterhouseCoopers guys? (Suits on.) [Variety]
· 36 hours after his father Kerry Packer dies, rumored Tom Cruise target James Packer takes over the family's $8 billion media empire. Just what Scientology needs to get their exciting little movement off the ground a bottomless source of funding from a malleable mind! Happy New Year, Scientologists! [THR]
· The OC's Adam Brody is developing a series for NBC based on his concept of "a rookie cop who joins a special unit of the LAPD that tracks the vampire population." Working title: Count Chrismukah. (Works best if you use Romanian accent.) [THR]
· Speaking of Romanian accents, the woman whose performance in Young Frankenstein remains one of history's greatest comic creations, Cloris Leachman, will be given a career achievement award at the closing gala of The Palm Springs International Film Festival. [THR]

It's interesting to watch the drunk driving arrests of Lost actresses Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros play themselves out, as a sort of good souse/bad souse pattern appears to be emerging, with Rodriguez taking on the role of dissident dipsomaniac to Watros' cool and contrite. At their recent arraignment hearing, Watros turns on the waterworks (through a worded statement read by her lawyer, of course) and gets a slap on the wrist; but "Four Strikes" Rodriguez isn't swerving away quite that easily:

Hello! Seth here. We're almost there, folks! Like a meth-mouthed hustler dumped off the side of Highway 62 as we bat-outta-hell-it out of Joshua Tree, 2005 is quickly receding in our collective rear view mirror, and we can't think of any better way to have spent its last fuzzy moments than here, with you, the fourteen people reading Defamer this week. We've tried to offer you some New Year's Eve plan options, but ultimately, we know you'll make the most of the overhyped, overpriced, overrated night. Just remember, it's not the size of your party, but what you do with the tiny party you've been ill-fated to that counts. We find scented candles and massage always keeps 'em happy, but you might want to stick to the more traditional routes of champagne, noisemakers, and whatnot.

· J.Lo's wedding video is back in her hands, the $1 million ransoming thieves are safely behind bars, and the world can go on not caring about her anymore.
· Can't celebrity video thieves come up with a number besides $1 million? Even hoaxes like this one? I mean, come on! Use your imagination, Dr. Evil!
· How hard is this going to suck?
· But don't sweat it, NBC. We already have the concept for your next hit sitcom!
· Christian Brando is being sued for nearly killing his ex-wife. But did he kill Bonny Lee Bakley?
· The Reeler has gone and done something clever: a top ten of critics' top ten movie lists!
· Hmm, I wonder what's going on over by Cute Overload. Holy shit I just had a cute-induced brain aneurysm.

· Fire in the Fields with The Bright Black and Wordlow at King King.
· DJ Tommy Powell on the decks at the Dirty, Dirty House Party at Akbar. Mixed crowd, great music, usually fun.
· Because the UCB Theater can't get ALL the plugs, try Christmas With the Webers at the ACME Comedy Theater on LaBrea.

This post is really just an excuse to use our favorite self-fashioned infographic, though pardon us if we feel it's reasonable to say that our dark prediction is already coming to pass:

Perhaps the most outrageous and offensive South Park episode of all time (and that's really saying something), "Bloody Mary," which first aired Dec. 7 as this season's finale, was pulled from the network schedule last night.