· Warner Brothers throws money at a comedy pitch that sounds like the beginning of a very bad joke from the Wedding Crashers team of David Dobkin and Andrew Panay: "Story concerns three daughters who bring their boyfriends home — an Arab, a Jew and an African-American — to meet their hard-nosed Southern father during the holidays." As soon as the pair can remember the set-up for the one that ends with the duck telling the bartender to "just put it on my bill," Universal is expected to make a preemptive $5 million offer to the pair. [Variety]
· You already know about how you'll soon be able to squint through your favorite TV shows on the video iPod, but why not read the trade reports? [Variety, THR]
· Fox has kicked The Simple Life to the curb, but NBC and The WB might be interested in getting some sloppy seconds with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. [Variety]
· CBS picks up the back nine for Ghost Whisperer, Criminal Minds, and How I Met Your Mother. Clearly, Jennifer Love Hewitt's ghost-detecting rack is good for at least nine more episodes. [THR]
· The Yankees are out of the playoffs, but unfortunately for Fox, they took all the Nielsen families with them. [Variety]

First, the bad news: There will be no Blind Item Guessing Game today. Breathe deeply into your brown paper lunch bag, pop an extra Vicodin, and, all on your own, think of an actor that you believe to be straight—then picture him in a sweaty clinch with a slightly less famous actor. See? You're gonna get through this. You don't need Ted Casablanca to have fun.

Now that Michael Eisner has been stripped of his Mickey ears and cast out of the Magic Kingdom, new CEO Robert Iger wasted no time trying to get back into Apple/Pixar head Steve Jobs' pants. The two moguls did everything but claw at each other's belt buckles when they announced yesterday that ABC's shows will be available to download to the new video iPod, and hinted that the Disney-Pixar relationship may soon be back on:

Sony announced that it will end its torturous James Bond Edition of "Just the Tip In" tomorrow and finally thrust the name of the new tuxedo model deep inside the superspy's anxious fans. We've heard that the recent British tabloid chatter is correct: Kate Moss is a skinny-minny coke-whore. We kid! Daniel Craig will be named as the latest Bond, news that we find at least fifty percent less satisfying than the possibility that he porked Sienna Miller. We offer our premature congratulations to Craig, who outlasted a potential Bond field of Clive Owen, Jude Law, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Hugh Grant, Dr. Who, a plate of delicious fish n' chips, a joke about bad teeth, and, of course, Ewan McGregor.

· All kidding aside: How Bruce Willis has avoided suicide this long is one of Hollywood's biggest mysteries. If the sight of that fedora didn't make him blow his brains out all over Kutcher's white suit, nothing will.
· Just in case you're the last person on earth to hear about today's release of the video iPod, onto which you can download day-old episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives thanks to Steve Jobs' unholy alliance with Disney, here you go. And if somehow this link that goes directly to Apple's site makes a free one show up in our mailbox, so be it. We are not ashamed of being whores to our shiny, white master.
· We are willing to bet that this MAC ad is not very popular among a select group of very high-powered publicists.
· "All the girls ended up getting naked in the movie. It’s really amazing, they want $30,000 to $40,000 a day to pose for Playboy, but we got them to do it for $200 a day, scale!” Don't forget, that low, low fee also includes the golden showers.

Broadcasting & Cable confirms WOW Report's story about Fox's hasty execution of The Simple Life; predictably, the network's statement contains no reference to Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie's mutual desire to kick each other in the ladyparts. From B&C:

· Your music round-up: Dios Malos, the litigious Ronnie James Dio's fave, at Amoeba (for free, of course); Miss Wolf Eyes at King King; Butch Walker, Gary Jules (you know, that guy with that song from Donnie Darko), and many others at the Hotel Café Tour at El Rey
· DJ Spooky performs a "digital exorcism" on Birth of a Nation at CalArts' Redcat, remixing the film with new footage and his own score. [via LAist]
· Author Rachel Manija Brown signs All the Fishes Come Home to Roost at Vronman’s in Pasadena. Here’s a synopsis: “In the 80s, Rachel's parents, 60s holdover hippies, leave CA for an ashram in cobra-ridden India. Once there, she finds total devotion to Pete Townshend's guru, Meher Baba, credited for having coined the slogan, “Don't worry, be happy,” and it becomes a place in which she meets wonderfully eccentric characters she'll never forget.” Well, that kind of kills our idea for a a hippies-going-to-India-and-meeting-Pete-Townshend's-guru coming-of-age novel, but it still sounds interesting.

It seems that the twin problems of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie's bloodfeud and Hilton's recent break-up were too much for the production of The Simple Life: Homewrecking Sluts Edition to overcome, as the WOW Report reveals that Fox has pulled the plug on America's favorite useless celebutantes:

The WB's Related isn't just another Sex and the City knockoff about four sexy, sassy ladies trying to make their way in Manhattan. It's also the story of a seasoned, sassy TV producer who, supported only by untold millions of Friends dollars, bravely got back into the game to learn what she's capable of on her own:

Media deep-throating sister site Gawker got their grubby paws on the cover of the Life & Style issue featuring the Holmes-parents-hate-heathen-daughtersnatcher-Cruise story we posted about earlier. We've already seen the pic circulating on the internets, but there's something about that first moment when you glimpse an Evil Bump at the ten-items-or-less line, nestled among the glossy scream headlines about Nicole Richie's efforts to finally get her skeleton on the outside of her body, that truly makes an improbable pregnancy of convenience feel real, you know?

· Hillary Clinton's swinging through Hollywood again for a series of fundraisers aimed at raising money for her "Senate re-election campaign," not her inevitable run (fingers crossed for a Clinton-Affleck ticket!) for President in 2008. [Variety]
· Jennifer Connelly is close to joining another feature project, but we don't even care what it is. We'd pay to watch her picking out orthopedic insoles at Rite Aid. Ugh, does that sound like some kind of weird fetish? Because it's totally not. If we wanted to go with the fetish angle, we would've said something about her wearing a bikini and sitting on balloons until they pop. [THR]
· Paramount will go halfsies on the movie adaptation of the musical Dreamgirls with DreamWorks, the " thinly veiled telling of the rise of Diana Ross and the Supremes." The stunt-driver budget alone is expected to be astronomical, so it's good the studios are splitting the financial burden. [Variety]
· Fox picks up full season orders of both The War at Home and Bones, allowing us to continue our unhealthy obsession with Bones' resident squint Emily Deschanel. My, aren't we stalkerish today? OK, we're done now. [THR]
· WGA Report: Honkies with penises still hogging all the writing jobs. [Variety]

Katie Holmes' Catholic family is predictably disturbed by their future son-in-law's surprise premarital implantation of the Miracle Baby in their daughter's womb. Also, they're none too thrilled about the whole swapping-Jesus-for-L.Ron-Hubbard thing:

The Cityrag blog tracks Keanu Reeves' possibly pathological (and almost certainly unhygienic) dedication to his "look" from a party in NY on July 12th to an LA restaurant a few days ago. Now that the actor has appropriated Albert Einstein's legendary (and probably apocryphal) tendency to wear the same outfit every day, we expect that Reeves will apply the conserved brain power to cracking the Unified Field Theory or remembering to remove his motorcycle helmet after entering a movie theater, you know, whatever blows his skirt up.

Let's get one thing straight: No matter how ABC decides to sell its back-to-back "Latin hour" programming block of The George Lopez Show and Freddie, Lopez's hacky Mexican jokes and Prinze's housecoat-wearing, voodoo-Catholic grandmother stereotype should be judged unfunny on their own merits:

Last night on The Late Show, actor Woody Harrelson admitted that he and his wife are expecting their third child, once again disproving the popular myths that regular exposure to THC or starring in Brett Ratner movies cause infertility:

· Why is everyone suddenly ganging up on America's Sweetheart, Paris Hilton? Ex-fiancé Paris Latsis' pal is calling her a "hooker," while mean boys Don Cheadle and Ryan Gosling sneer that Hilton wouldn't have much fun partying in Darfur.
· A new study determined that even males under 25, who generally will watch anything, wouldn't go see this summer's shitty movies.
· Even we were surprised by the outcome of the latest Celebrity Vs.Thing standoff, Ryan Reynolds vs. Wine Stoppers. The results are even more unbelievable when you consider that abs were not mentioned.
· It seems obvious to us, but don't you think that by now Boy George should know to hide the 13 bags of coke before calling the cops to report a burglary? Perhaps even more embarrassing than this rookie mistake is his lawyer's "That must be somebody else's 13 bags of coke!" defense.

· The legendary Ray Bradbury reads from Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars at the Venice-Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library—but in about three hours, so you'd better leave now. Your boss will understand.
· Meanwhile in West Hollywood, a slightly less critically acclaimed author will do the read-and-sign thing at Book Soup, where Sunset Strip Groupie Hall of Fame inductee Pamela Des Barres celebrates the new edition of I'm With The Band.
· Music round-up: Green Day at the Wiltern; Great Northern at Spaceland; The Proclaimers make the Benny & Joon soundtrack come alive at the House of Blues.

After pleading no contest to a drunk driving charge, The West Wing's Stockard Channing is the latest actor to learn a tough lesson: on the mean streets of Los Angeles, justice is both swift and expensive:

Every so often, a magical combination of celebrity and odd circumstance birth a Special Edition of our PrivacyWatch feature. A reader gives us David Carradine, a fast food joint, and a wandering canine:

While cruising J-Date ("browsing" is an inadequate way to describe the experience, is it?), a reader came across director Luke Greenfield's profile: