· "'I wrote the first page the day my partner died,' Mr. Lewis said, sucking an Aqua Drop to ease the perpetual dry mouth that is a side effect of the drugs he still takes for his lungs..." This New York Times piece on Jerry Lewis pumps the smell of old people out of your computer speakers as you read it. Really quite something!
· In other stinky-entertainer news, the LA Times notices the trend of "unwashed slacker chic" on television , with breakout characters such as Earl from My Name is Earl and Lost's Hurley. Career bloggers everywhere rejoice at their new 'hot' status.
· Blogger Goldenfiddle wonders aloud about the comings and goings of Matthew "so-rich-he-could-order-God-to-his-room-for-escort-companionship" Perry.
· You have spoken, the New Paramount has listened. 50 Cent's movie billboards come down.
· Okay, this thing is so cool I could puke. MIT Media Lab: you are my Higher Nerd Power.

· Marvel in carnie-oddity-fascination at the The Benson Interruption, 9:30 tonight at the UCB Theater. Starring Doug Benson of VH1's Best Week Ever, it's standup, with a twist: he can interrupt whenever he damn feels like it. Tonight's performers are Graham Elwood, Patton Oswalt and Paul F. Tompkins. If you do not laugh, we'll perform a self-pancreotomy.
· Quick and get your ass down to the Santa Monica design district for the 3rd Annual installation of Wine & Design, "a walking tour of contemporary home and office design showrooms, each offering complementary tasting(s) of regional wines in the surroundings of exceptional design." Don't get too tanked, though. You may wind up with a $75,000 Mies Van Der Rohe sectional.
· Call that cute chick you met last weekend already, you pussy, and take her to see John Cale and The Tiger Lillies at UCLA Live. What the hell are you waiting for?!

The Scoop reports of multiple ill-winds blowing through the Cheeto-crumb-strewn halls of the House of Federline. Take, for instance, this report of Britney Spears' reaction to her husband's blood-and-sweat-soaked demo CD, which he offered up to his bride for constructive criticism:

This post goes out to OT-VIII, better known by his Earthly-monicker of Tom Cruise. Consider yourself on high-alert, Number Eight: The Insider reports that Brooke Shields, the late-night-recording-studio- Paxil-binge-snorting-drug-addict, has just announced that she is pregnant again. And let's be realistic we all know she only gets herself knocked up so she can get her hands on her next fix.

Behold the above photograph of adorably-dimpled, Survivor-hosting- munchkin Jeff Probst in the altogether, which The WOW Report recently posted (altogether now: "WOW!"). We're not sure what took so long for it to trickle down to our one non-lazy gay eye, but we're sure glad it did. We had no idea Probst was the source of such a generous endowment to the reality-show arts!

[UPDATE: Rick Rockwell has contacted us to deny any involvement with the below ad, obviously the work of an anonymous, troublemaking Craigslist miscreant with access to unflattering photos.]

An operative clued us into this heart-warming Fox press release:

· Les Moonves blinks CBS News chief Andrew Heyward out of existence, a delayed reaction to the Bush military service report fiasco that also stained Dan Rather's legacy. Replacing him is CBS Sports president Sean McManus, who plans on retooling their flagship broadcast into the more ratings-friendly CBS Evening Point Spreads. [Variety]
· While Peter Jackson is shrinking himself out of existence, his upcoming King Kong is taking the other route and turning into a bloated, 3-hour affair, pushing the budget to $207 million. Universal executives go giant apeshit behind closed doors, but ultimately give in. [Variety]
· Robert De Niro will star in the Barry Levinson-directed What Just Happened?, "based on Art Linson's memoir about his experiences as a Hollywood producer...[T]he filmmakers hope will do for moviemaking what Wag The Dog did for politics." Remember when everything was the 'Wag the Dog' of something else? "It's the Wag the Dog of black, middle-aged female empowerment movies!" [Variety]
· Dreamworks acquires MacArthur Genius Award-winning author Jonathan Lethem's novel As She Climbed Across the Table for a feature adaptation. First studio note: "Let's take some of this genius-stink off Mr. Brainiac's little science project, shall we?" [Variety]
· The record whose title confirmed our darkest fears, Ashlee Simpson's I Am Me hits the Billboard 200 at No. 1, proving once and for all that we are a loyal, forgiving nation of scat enthusiasts. [THR]

Al Reynolds, husband to Star Jones and DEFINITELY not that dude we met in the meatrack on Fire Island that one Labor Day weekend who made Prince-backup-singer-vixen moaney sounds, has had an encounter with the long, hot, bicepy arm of the law. From E! Online:

Our totally stylin', urban (but not in the euphemism-for-black way) kissin' cousin Gridskipper provides their final scientific data on the last episode of E!s deeply unsettling 10-part excursion into the Heart of Bodyshots Darkness, Taradise, with Tara Reid its Kahlua Colonel Kurtz. The show's finale was a firm hammer blow to the final nail in Tara's career coffin, and yet why are we left with the ominous feeling that when it comes to Tara Reid there will always be more nails? And more coffins.

Welcome to the premiere edition of Defamer Instant Message Theater (DIM Theater for short). On the bill today is the classic tragedy No Entrance, wherein two peons, the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the studio lot if you will, share news of the Queens arrival, only to be turned away by an ignorant castle guardsman:

It would seem the kitchen got a wee too hot for Harriet Miers, but rest easy, readers. I'm in this for the long haul. And let the record show my record on abortion has never wavered. I'm all for them!

· Laguna Beach's teenage-girl-drool-inducer Talan has his eyes set on Hollywood, telling Teen Vogue "I could do a movie if I want to!" Yeah, right, Talan. Like someone's going to put you in some low-budget non-union teen slasher flick, then use Craigslist as their casting director. Shyeah. Whatever, dude.
· LA.comfidential notices a disturbing similarity going on with Fergie and Donald. Let's hope it ends there, and the Don's spawn is the only one who'll need a diaper change anytime soon at Trump manor.
· Lindsay Lohan tells OK! magazine of her recent near-death ordeal, when she was literally being fed through IV drips. And that was at the Geisha House! "I was going through a lot of stuff and overworking and not thinking of my body. I was going through that phase that everyone goes through." This is everyone.
· BLDGBLOG gives us a glimpse into the beyond weird crop-circley big brother world of LA traffic control.
· There's some seriously fishy-assed business going down by the DKNY art department. Either that or we have a Photoshopping Michelangelo in our midst.

· What do midgets, Mexican wrestlers and burlesque strippers have in common? We mean, besides being Michael Medved's secret ultimate fourgy fantasy? They are the main attractions at Lucha Va Voom, the only-in-LA must see event, tonight and tomorrow at the Mayan. We will most definitely be there.
· Wednesday Night Music: The Sun at the Troubadour, The Like at the El Rey, Diplo at the Conga Room.
· Tab Hunter reads from his new memoir Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of Movie Star at Book Soup tonight. Find out what life was like for a closeted Hollywood Heartthrob in the 1950s, including juicy details about his relationship with Anthony Perkins. (Could someone ask him if they ever had shower sex and get back to us? Thanks.)

Wherein we gesture to our idiot-savantastic readership to take their seats in the front row of the humpy E! gossip instructor Ted Casablanca's SAT preparation class and darken with a #2 lead pencil the oval which best completes the comparison: stairwell is to cater-waiter as boning is to blank. Consider all possible answers before answering One Aptitude-Measuring Blind Vice:

Let's face facts, Angelenos: we live in a solipsistic bubble. Mention Broadway, we think Chinatown. Refer to ivy, we think patio dining. And drop the name Ari in a local crowd and see if anyone blinks. Who else could you be talking about but Ari Emanuel, eco-friendly Endeavor overlord and now high-profile blogger with a stubbornly persistent case of the crabbies?

Sitting down with the Associated Press at the Toronto Film Festival back in September to promote his new movie Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, Robert Downey Jr., the poster boy for drug abuse, made one thing crystal clear:

Wherein we gesture to our idiot-savantastic readership to take their seats in the front row of the humpy E! gossip instructor Ted Casablanca's SAT preparation class and darken with a #2 lead pencil the oval which best completes the comparison: stairwell is to cater-waiter as boning is to blank. Consider all possible answers before answering One Aptitude-Measuring Blind Vice:

God bless the Gays, a tribe so fiercely protective of its own, there are virtually no lengths they won't go to keep their treasured idols' (98% of which are loud, mascara-smeared, self-destructive middle-aged women, or depictions thereof) careers alive.

Perhaps you have spied the hallucinatorily hypnotic floating 3D glasses swooping seductively across your screen. Perhaps you have recently been peppering casual conversation and exclamations of lovemaking passion with involuntary cries of "I LOVE THE 80s!!!"