Buried way at the bottom of today's Fox 411 column is this nugget about Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson's parents, who seem to have taken the controversial position that StallionMania might be on the wane:

As we predicted, the Borat affair has now officially escalated into a "sexy time explosion" of international debate over freedom of online speech. France-based watchdog group Reporters Without Borders have come out against the Kazakh government for having shut down the Borat.kz website, claiming it is an abuse of their internet administrator powers:

· ABC's Steve McPherson and CBS's Nina Tassler cram into their diving bells and explore the strange depths of the summertime alternative-programming ocean, a murky place which previously yielded creepy, luminescent creatures like Dancing with the Stars, and return with the same idea to run English-language "telenovelas" multiple times a week next summer. [Variety]
· The large picture of Tom Freston front-and-center on THR's homepage is seriously freaking us out. Make it stop! He's supposed to be the laid back Viacom president, not the creepy, intense one! [THR]
· The Writers Guild has fallen in love with NBC's soon-to-be new Thursday night comedy lineup, giving The Office and My Name Is Earl three nominations apiece for the WGA Awards. [Variety]
· MPAA head pirate hunter Dan Glickman is "encouraged" by the Chinese government's raid of black market DVD shops in Beijing, but urges them to continue their anti-piracy progress by "running over the fuckers with a tank next time." [THR]
· Fox signs a three-year first-look production deal with the producers of Wedding Crashers, Tapestry Films. Fun fact we didn't know: They also produced 15 Olsen twin movies. [Variety]

The Eurythmics are not quite the prolific trendsetters they were in the 80s; their latest album is basically a greatest hits, though it does have one new single, a shmaltzy number titled "I've Got a Life." We have no idea what that means, but we are thrilled for Annie Lennox just the same. But now comes news that Lennox is not satisfied merely in announcing her own life-proprietorship, and is now sharing her keen life having/not having intuition with others. For example, take this recent interaction with Orlando Bloom:

Today's LAT reports that New New Paramount™ chief Brad Grey, still twitching from the acquisitive rush of the studio's DreamWorks buy, is trying to add Lost producer/MI:III (hey, that's really fun to type!) director/current Hollywood It-boy JJ Abrams to his hoard:

Brokeback Mountain wasn't the only script about minority discrimination floating around Hollywood for seven years: The Ringer, Ricky Blitt's sweeping, heartbreaking tale of a guy who pretends to be mentally retarded so he can compete in the Special Olympics, also landed on many a showbiz desk in its long journey to the screen. According to this E! Online report on a story from yesterday's Variety, Blitt and Ringer's producers, the Farrelly brothers, are now accusing Trey Parker and Matt Stone of having read the script and stealing the plot for a 2004 episode of South Park with virtually the same storyline:

At the TCAs in July, Steve Guttenberg threatened the established order of bland soundbites with some memorably unhinged words. (A fire ant attack, his designated tooth-brusher, and his daily "tough commute" from a long-defunct Eastern European nation were discussed.) In an interview with the UK's Metro, a more lucid Goot, the Second Hardest Working Actor of the 80s, continues his commitment to telling it like it is:

· If such a thing as "box office prediction software" actually worked, its inventor would be dead faster than the guy who figured out how to make cars run on tap water.
· Any story that squeezes Dolly Parton and trannies into its title gets an automatic link.
· Because you deserve a nice dick joke or five: Bryan Singer's (probable) nicknames for Brandon Routh's (alleged) enormous hog*.
· We're willing to bet these kinds of conversations aren't confined to NYC.
· And lastly, we're sad to note the all-too-quick passing of Radar, a magazine we really enjoyed (we wrote a little something for them in the first issue, in fact), and where we have friends employed. This is the part where we'd joke that we're not going to cry, but then we realized we're not stuck in a bad SNL sketch and can just be genuinely sad.

Not all of the agencies are having fun snickering over the havoc their holiday gifts are wreaking among the assistant class. (We hear that the winner of UTA's $5,000 Golden Ticket, an assistant to the EVP of MTV Films, has already been kidnapped by an Argentine gang subcontracted by disgruntled Sony call-rollers.) A spy reports on some chilling news from the normally sleepy William Morris Agency:

Blogger not only but also was the lucky recipient of the Brokeback Mountain swag pictured above, a cleverly subversive piece of promotional merchandise. For straight audiences, the item is merely a bandanna: classic, simple and western, and thus highly evocative of the movie itself. But for The Gays, a colored bandanna means one thing: the Hanky Code (arguably NSFW), a comprehensive fetish classification system based entirely on spectral differentiation. It's sort of like the Department of Homeland Security's Color-Coded Threat Level System, only in place of terrorism alertness, you're measuring inclination towards fistfucking.

· Wednesday night music round-up: Dirty Little Secret at Spaceland; The Shore at Silverlake Lounge; Placido Domingo at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. What? Sometimes you want a little Wagner on a chilly Wednesday night.
· It's High Times Comedy Night at the Hollywood Improv, with Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Silverman, Jeffrey Ross, and Matt Besser. And at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, the delightfully titled "In the Hole: An All Girl Revue" recreates the (dare we say erotically charged? we dare) ambiance of a women's prison.
· We're not going to tell you what this panel is about, or even where it is. Just know that semiretired MPAA pirate-hunter Jack Valenti is scheduled to participate, and no matter the subject, you will be completely mesmerized by his flair for metaphor. .

We at Defamer realize some members of our readership may still have some disposable income left after buying out all the inventory in our t-shirt store, and we're committed to keeping these prized consumers informed of Hollywood's hottest retail deals. We've received word that bleeding-edge celebrity trend purveyor Kitson has slashed prices on its remaining inventory of Cambodian orphans (the much more popular "Zahara" line of Ethiopian babies sold out weeks ago—sorry, no rainchecks!) in hopes of finding the adorable, overstocked tykes (pictured above; mohawk kit sold separately) suitably fashionable homes before the holidays. As a special bonus, the first dozen shoppers to mention Defamer will also receive a "Team Jolie" tote bag, free of charge!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're running dangerously short on holiday shopping time, and in the event that you're not done yet, you're a bad person. Luckily, the fine people at corporate blogging mothership Gawker Media (motto: Give Until It Hurts, And Then Roll Over And Go To Sleep) are here to save you from the evil, procrastinating elves who live inside your head. They're offering Free! Priority! Mail! to ship your order from our t-shirt shop, ensuring that your Christmakkahwanzaa won't be ruined by the thoughtlessness of old-timey snail mail. Order now, and often, lest shirts like "It's not whoring if you do it for free" (pictured at left, and tattooed in a place we're too modest to reveal in this space) fail to stuff your greedy stockings in time for the holidays. Consume!

A frustrated reader gives us the inside copyediting scoop on exactly what went down with the missing hyphen in the 40-Year-Old Virgin key art, which we posted about earlier today:

An operative informs us that New New Paramount™ head Brad Grey, apparently insecure that placing a gift-wrapped Steven Spielberg under the tree wasn't a sufficient expression of his love for his flock, has put on his Santa hat once again:

TV networks are quickly realizing the necessity of aligning themselves with a major online content store. ABC and NBC made the obvious choice of an Apple/iTunes marriage, but MTV has decided to forego the shiny, white, easily-scratchable party, pairing its soon to launch URGE network with woefully unhip big meanie, Microsoft:

· Var reports on yesterday's New Line layoffs (two dozen let go just in time for the holidays!), but says "no top execs were axed." We've heard that VPs Matt Moore and George Waud were among the purged, who many tell us should qualify as "top level execs." Developing... [Variety]
· Potentially great news for Arrested Development fans: Though FOX hasn't "officially" canceled AD yet, there are "serious" talks between 20th Century Fox TV and Showtime and ABC to find the series a new model home. We've heard rumblings (there we go hearing things again) that the Showtime deal might be close to completion, but we've been hurt before. [Variety, THR]
· The grown-up sons of Tito Jackson are shopping around a reality series in which they try to recapture the musical semi-fame of their youth. No further commentary necessary. [THR]
· Jamie Foxx will star in adaptation of James Stetson novel Blood on the Leaves for Paramount, as a "district attorney who grapples with feelings of revenge as he prosecutes a black history professor on trial for the murders of white men accused of crimes against blacks during the civil rights movement," Sadly, it looks like Foxx's vaunted musical skills will go unutilized in the role. [Variety]
· Disney's first attempt to tap into the Chinese entertainment market involves unraveling the secrets of a magic gourd. [THR]
· Now officially famous for becoming the new James Bond, Daniel Craig signs over ten percent of his soul to CAA. [Variety]

Universal chairperson Stacey Snider sat down with the THR to wash that DreamWorks nastiness right out of her hair, and in between raving about next year's Miami Vice ("It's got everything: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, rap music, boats, trains, cars, babes.") and discussing the upcoming Munich, gives some insight into the budgeting decisions behind two movies that are dominating much of the industry's year-end discussion:

We can only imagine how Tom Cruise reacted to the events of 9/11, staring helplessly at his TV as he barked into a cellphone, "I don't care where you find me a Stealth Bomber, just get it!" His army of one was woefully underutilized that day, but Page Six reports that Cruise is still determined to become a 9/11 hero:

Many things, it seems, went wrong with The Brothers Grimm, one of 2005's more resounding box office bombs. Big-budget movie production is a delicate, interconnected affair, so who's to say that an error in producer Harvey Weinstein's fuckability calculus, which led to casting little-known actress Lena Headley instead of an Oscar-nominated treasure, didn't contribute to its failure? From The Scoop: