We are still scratching our heads as to what went wrong with The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. For starters, the boardroom showdowns -on The Donald's version, they're a three-ring Circus Maximus of campy, vicious (and sometimes sex-educational) entertainment -were about as compelling as watching dough rise. Part of the blame must fall to Martha's daughter Alexis, whose advisor role was a bland and sedated phone-in affair. As it turns out, however, this chick's got pluck! She was just saving all the good stuff for her own Sirius radio show:

Because nothing says holiday cheer like sexual identity confusion and also-ran status, because putting his name into a Google image search is foolproof fun, because it's Friday, and well, just because, ladies and gentlemen, we bring you: Clay Aiken, Christmas Angel.

Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are authored by our readers, and rarely spell-checked by our editor; send yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put “sighting” or “PrivacyWatch” in the subject line) and let the world know that Rob Reiner still gets excited about his movie posters.

· The following is not a joke: CBS is developing a family sitcom for Rev. Al Sharpton. Better: It's called Al in the Family, but will likely not incorporate the wacky hijinks of the infamous Tawana Brawley case. [Variety]
· The November sweeps results are in, and CBS and ABC end the ratings-whoring period in a deeply unsatisfying tie in the 18-49 demographic. Unsurprisingly, ultracompetive CBS is touting its razor-thin 16,000 viewer edge in the demo, as well as a victory in total viewers. NBC, it should be noted, did not finish last, and Fox holds its breath, absorbing its loss knowing that soon it will release its American Idol Kracken and rise from the depths of Nielsen failure. [THR]
· Director Peter Berg has compromising pictures of Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx, "persuades" him to join the cast of his The Kingdom for Universal. [Variety]
· As noted yesterday, NBC blows up its Thursday night for January, moving Earl and The Office from Tuesday to new Must See spots. To make room on the schedule, they're knocking Joey on the head with a rolling pin, leaving him somewhere in the desert, and dealing with the problem only if he somehow finds his way home. [THR]
· Major cable companies announce rate hikes for 2006. Fuck you, major cable companies, we already pay too much as it is for 25 channels of Law & Order reruns. [THR]

The past few months of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's tenure will go down as a dark period indeed in the annals of impenetrably- accented- former-action- stars-turned-ineffective- legislator history. Between Warren Beatty's taunts, the rancid taste of crushing defeat, and the fate of a man whose thighs he once ogled in his hands, it's hardly surprising when we read a Radar report that Arnold is doing everything he can to sweep his latest headache a British libel suit under the carpet:

Wherein we invite our readers to crash-land their jetliner in humpy E! gossipist Ted Casablanca's mysterious tropical paradise and establish a new society with near-weekly blind items as the only codified law. This time, Casablanca casts aside the dirty needles and closeted actors to weave a somewhat semishocking tale of celebrity tooldom. Dive into One Stunted, Surly Blind Vice:

Sony is hoping that the reported troubles (rewrites, reshoots, money) surrounding the Fun with Dick and Jane production won't show up on the screen, and that Jim Carrey's big holiday movie can help salvage a bomb-riddled year. Today's LAT feature on Dick and Jane answers its own question about how (besides Jim Carrey's usual GNP of Bolivia salary) a movie without CGI dinosaurs or simulated global cataclysms might balloon to a nine-figure budget:

Two stars of ABC's Gilligan's Island-with-polar-bears-and-guns remake Lost have been arrested for drunk driving:

The hype was so all-consuming that we stayed up three hours past our bedtime to witness the historic, televised hatchet-burying reunion of the hero of our insomniac youth (David Letterman) and the goddess of our housebound, shiftless now (Oprah). The evening did not disappoint. After a monologue and Top Ten list dedicated to the Queen of Daytime, Letterman beckoned Winfrey to his desk. The World's Most Powerful Woman emerged, regally (Can Oprah move in any other way? No, she cannot. ) crossed the stage, and with arms outstretched and ready for a feud-ending embrace, was immediately floored by a surprise Letterman haymaker. The twin titans tumbled to the floor, and the next two minutes were a blur of fists, teeth, and razor-sharp manicures, the desperate grunts of the combatants mixing dissonantly with the nasal protestations of stunned bandleader Paul Shaffer.

· Today's most-emailed question: Why is a search for Jodie Sweetin (you know, the middle child on Full House) the third-ranked query on MSN today? (Scroll to bottom right of the page.) Answer: We have no f'ing clue. Please enlighten us.
· To be perfectly honest, she kind of sounds like the ideal housemate.
· If you show up to photograph an event, and you don't recognize anyone who strolls across the red carpet, did that carpet ever really unfurl?
· You can pay porn stars a lot of money to have sex with you? Who knew?
· Ryan Phillippe was voted Hollywood's hottest dad, but Ken Sunshine might demand a do-over given Affleck's big news today.
· We really hope that you haven't been missing out on the brilliant death-throes of our talented friend over at Oddjack. Stop by and pour out a little liquor for AJ's scorched bit of blog-earth while perusing this post on the odds of a Simpson-Lachey reunion.

If you were a bird soaring high above a movie premiere, you might notice a pattern in the seemingly random seat assignments beneath you. (You would also quickly be shot down by a PR woman's handpistol; no feathered squawker's gonna interrupt the flow of her big night!) The WOW Report provides this helpful visual guide to Brokeback Mountain's premiere seating cartography; note everything starts at the Jake Pole and spreads outward in concentric circles of descending celebrity significance, resulting in a Hollywood social-hierarchy dart board of sorts.

We recently received this PrivacyWatch sighting from a guy who knows a guy who spotted Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston in Scottsdale, AZ:

· Music round-up: The Joggers at the Echo; and Monsters are Waiting at the Troubadour; No Neck Blues Band at Spaceland. In vaguely music-related news, whatever's left of the post-Rockstar INXS will be signing something at the new Virgin Megastore in Hollywood.
· Burlesque act The Hollywood Pin-Up Girls do the clothed-but-naughty bump-and-grind thing at the Super Sexy Show at El Cid.
· Tonight's URB Magazine release party at Joseph's Cafe goes blogshit crazy, as Pink Is The New Blog's Trent DJ's, and our lawyer-baiting t-shirt maker pals Randy and Moss also chip in with some time at the turntables.

We'd never expect an event for Jackass to attract anyone in the alphabetical neighborhood of the A-list, members of which generally don't have a very high tolerance for the stapling of genitalia to stationary objects or the show-offy chewing of broken glass. But when nearly all of the wire photos of the night include pornstar/recall gubernatorial hopeful Mary Carey, things are not good. According to this report from an operative unlucky enough to have turned up to the party, the planners had a problem luring warm bodies of any kind to fill the venue, even with the promise of booze and food:

Aimless, drifting retiree Michael Eisner's severance contract might forbid him from poaching his favorite Disney cast members until 2007, but it can't stop the ambitious mogul from hooking up with that most coveted of entrepreneurial partners, the anonymous Craigslist poster with big ideas:

Us Weekly has just reported that Jennifer Garner has given birth, an announcement that required no fewer than five exclamation points to adequately communicate the giddy joy of new motherhood:

All those dire predictions about Canada shutting down Hollywood look like they may come to pass after all, but not because of runaway production. An Ottawa-based company called Research In Motion, which provides North American BlackBerry email service, is in a messy patent dispute. Result: all U.S. BlackBerry service is on the verge of a court-ordered shutdown.

· As previously discussed, now that American Idol is definitely staying on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the other networks scrub clean their soiled underthings and scramble to rearrange their schedules. [Variety]
· Amy Brenneman will join Al Pacino in the thriller 88 Minutes, in which Pacino learns that he's got only 88 minutes to sleepwalk through another performance before his character is killed. [THR]
· 20th Century Fox TV signs Nicole Richie to a talent holding deal, with the studio holding onto Richie until they can identify a talent that doesn't involve distressing weight-loss or hating Paris Hilton, then jam her into an appropriate, ill-fated project. [Variety]
· CBS rides Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to a Wednesday night win in total viewers, but ABC ekes out a 18-49 demo victory thanks to Lost. [THR]
· Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman turn their political attention to the very serious problem of 15 year-olds being able to buy violent videogames without an annoyed parent present. [Variety]

Like a cat play-swatting at an injured bird, Fox has been taking its sweet time waffling over where to put American Idol on its midseason schedule, leaving a very flinchy NBC hanging and nervous. The trades report today that the network has made its mildly sadistic albeit hilariously satisfying decision: it wasn't changing a thing.

Pretty much any prankster with a keyboard and a rudimentary ability to fill out web forms can whip up a fake online celebrity-wedding registry, but it seems that the British Sun really, really wanted to believe that the "top secret" Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes Neiman Marcus gift list (complete with Oct. 21, 2006 D-date) was the real deal. The entire Neiman registry site is now down, but the JustJared blog
preserved the page, allowing us all to window-shop for the usual collection of crystal, table settings, and linens that the gazillionaire lovers certainly need. Unfortunately, Neiman Marcus seems woefully unprepared for the eventuality of a genuine Cruise-Holmes registry, as nary a platinum-plated e-meter, the perfect gift for the pseudospiritual, psychiatry-eschewing couple who have everything, can be found.