1.) Chris Brown loves women.
He appeared on The Wendy Williams Show today to continue The Remorse Tour '09.

2.) The Unveiling of Charla Nash
Charla—who had her hands and face gruesomely torn off by her friend's pet chimp—was interviewed by Oprah this week. Her eyes were lost in the attack, so she hasn't seen what she looks like.

Also, while I generally love primates, the one who attacked Charla looks like an asshole.

3.) Slade's smiley

4.) Ben Affleck's cameo on Curb Your Enthusiasm
If you blink, you'll miss him.

5.) Tabloid stars collide

On The Insider this week, Jon Gosselin was giving Levi Johnston some "parenting advice." Earlier in the week on the same show, he went into some detail about his responsibility as a parent.

And he also talked shit on Kate's hair and kissing skills.

6.) Speaking of hair…
This kid has been suspended from school for getting an elaborate design shaved into his head. He is not allowed to return unless he shaves the rest of his head. His parents are supporting his "freedom of expression." Judging from the way he speaks, this kid needs a lot more school, and a little less expression.

7.) Men blame everything on our periods!

8.) This:

9.) Stephanie Pratt is growing on me.

10.) "It's important for women to stick together."
Faux-minism is not the answer for tackling double standards, when you don't even know what "double standards" are.

As you may recall, back in May Keith Olbermann lashed out at Cityfile, Wonkette and Gawker for reporting that he'd angrily walked out on MSNBC after losing a Ben Affleck booking to Rachel Maddow. Olbermann claimed that the reports of his hissy-fit were greatly exaggerated and that he'd actually taken a few days off to mourn the death of his mother, which had occurred two weeks prior.

Now he's taking all kinds of heat from foe and friend alike over this whole Richard Wolffe situation, and on Monday he claimed that he was too busy in June and July fighting with Bill O'Reilly or something to pull Wolffe aside off camera for five minutes to ask a few questions about any potential conflicts of interest with the lobbying job he started in April. This led us to wonder, "Were Olbermann and his producers too bogged down dealing with other things' in April and May as well?" Well, tonight Olbermann offered up a familiar excuse to TVNewser in regards to why he didn't question Wolffe during the April/May time frame:

The bloggers are leaving one component out, unfairly so: In April, I knew vaguely that Richard Wolffe had gone to work for a non-news firm, and that's about the last I heard of it. It was entirely concurrent with my mother's fatal illness, and I turned it over entirely to my management team. My first awareness that this was more than just a non-news job, was this week.

If Jonathan Berr, whoever he is, does not like my prioritizing caring for my mother and dealing with her death, and then doing as many shows as I could, ahead of vetting the comments of our analysts and my management team, frankly, I feel sorry for him. Getting myself through those two months were, and are, more important than what is still being investigated about Richard.

Now, besides the obvious, there are a number of disturbing things about this statement, the first being Olbermann's dismissive "whoever he is" tone towards Jonathan Berr. Who is Jonathan Berr and what did he do to spark Olbermann's ire? Well, he's a writer for Daily Finance who happened to write a eminently reasonable piece critical of Olbermann's recent actions from the perspective of an Olbermann fan. The points he brought up and the questions he asked in his piece were not irrational or inflammatory in any way and deserve consideration. As such, the "whoever he is" condescension is way out of line, and frankly it's quite ugly, seeing as how Berr was nothing less than respectful in his Olbermann article.

Another disturbing thing about Olbermann's statement is the ease with which he seems willing to throw his staff under the bus for failing to do what he should have done in regards to a simple quizzing of Richard Wolffe. The title of the show is Countdown with Keith Olbermann, is it not? Does the old, tired Harry Truman adage "the buck stops here" not apply to cable news anchors whose names appear prominently in the titles of their shows?

Then there's this, an apparent blatant contradiction in the statement separated only by a few words — "In April, I knew vaguely that Richard Wolffe had gone to work for a non-news firm...My first awareness that this was more than just a non-news job, was this week." Um, say what? Which is it Keith? Please clarify.

Finally, I personally can't even begin to imagine the pain involved with losing a mother. My mom's mortality does cross my mind occasionally and the mere thought of it shakes me in places I never knew I was capable of being shaken, someplace deep down where the body meets the soul. But with that said, Olbermann was in the building and working after his mother's death, and if he was able to go on the air and host a show each night, how could he have not taken the time to question Wolffe's lobbying side gig? Again, how much more than a, "Richard, tell me about this new job of yours," would it have taken? And fuck, a simple Google search or two would've raised a number of red flags, but apparently even that would've been too much an effort.

The bottom line here, and everybody knows this, is that this is all a bunch of horseshit, and sadly it didn't have to be that way. If Olbermann would've just stepped up in the beginning and said something along of the lines of, "I know this looks bad, but I became too bogged down by other things, not to mention too trusting of another human being, and let this one slip by me...I'm truly sorry," this might have all gone away quietly (Notice that most of the heat he's been taking on this hasn't come from Fox News, but from Olbermann allies on the internet!). Instead, he's offered up nothing but lame excuses and angry diatribes all week, flailing about madly in the quicksand all the while, and frankly he's looked nothing less than pathetic in doing so.

Richard LaGravenese, stalwart screenwriter who recently directed P.S. I Love You, has landed another helming gig. He'll both direct and write a romaaanncceeee called Man and Wife. Here's hoping there will be some sort of empowering karaoke or montage moment. [Variety]

Jon Hamm has signed on to star opposite Ben Affleck in a "romantic crime thriller" called The Town, which Affleck is also directing. No, sadly, Hamm and Affleck will not be romancing each other. Rebecca Hall, so lively and smart in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, will play the lady. Nuts. [THR]

Quietly masterful director Richard Linklater looks to have lined up his next project. He'll make Liars (A-E) for Scott Rudin and Miramax. The movie is about a lady on her way to the Obama inauguration who revisits old boyfriends on the way. So it's sort of like Broken Flowers, only instead of ending with a weary middle-aged man standing in a rainy intersection, bereft and alone, it'll end with Hope. [Variety]

Wes Anderson will unveil his latest work, a stop-motion animation movie based on Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr. Fox, will premiere at the London Film Festival. The movie sports voice work provided by small-time slouches like George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Bill Murray. I really hope it's wonderful. [Variety]

Alcon has paid high six figures for Prisoners, a thriller spec about a man who goes vigilante and locks a dude in his basement. Awhile back Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale had been attached to star (Wahlberg as the vigilante, Bale as a policeman investigating the incident), but now they're no longer aboard. Hopefully this will free Bale up to do a damn comedy, because... dag. [THR]

Hm. Josh Radnor, somewhat irksome star of How I Met Your Mother (about five young adults in New York tryin' to make their way), will make his film debut with HappyThankYouMorePlease, about six young adults in New York tryin' to make their way. Somehow he landed a pretty nice cast: Zoe Kazan, Kate Mara, Richard Jenkins (who will not play a young adult, I'm guessing), and Liev's theatre-lovin' younger brother Pablo Schreiber. [Variety]

Oh look. They're going to make a movie version of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Well, they already made a version in the early 80s, but this will be bigger budget and fancy and all that! And probably done with computertrons. In other news, you no longer have a childhood. [THR]

Tell your little sister (or creepy older brother) to sit down and take deep breaths. Because her (or his) favorite show, ABC's gymnastics deep-dive Make It Or Break It, has been renewed for another 10 episodes. Because it's a hit! [Variety]

• Twilight star Robert Pattinson hates New York and its deranged women. He's been whining constantly about it while working on a film in the city and can't wait to get back to him mommy in London. [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• Lady Gaga groped her boobs and stripped down to show off her ample bottom at a gay club in London over the gay pride weekend. [UK Sun]
  
  
• Transformers director Michael Bay says that Megan Fox has "a lot of growing up to do." Bay went on to say that "nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her" and also claimed credit for turning Nick Cage, Will Smith and Ben Affleck into big stars. Team Megan! [Daily News]
  
  
• Josh Duhamel says that he and Fergie were given a stripper pole as a wedding gift, but that he actually plays around on it more than she does. And oh yeah, he's an ass man. [Page Six]
  
  
• Russell Crowe just can't stop being a prick. He was in attendance at yesterday's epic Wimbledon final between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer when he decided that he wasn't happy with his seat. He saw a better one that was open closer to the court and tried to move down into it. This did not go over well with the ushers working the event. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Oh snap! Chris Brown is hooking up with Kanye West's ex, Amber Rose. The burning question now is who will go all Suge Knight on Chris Brown first—Jay-Z or Kanye? [Daily News]
  
  
• Rihanna attended a 4th of July celebration in Vegas wearing a loose jacket that exposed "silver sequinned nipple petals" on her breasts. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Totally old Entourage actress Carla Gugino says that Hollywood is an ageist town. Yeah, I know, quite shocking, right? [Page Six]
  
  
• Courtney Love recently trashed a hotel room. Now employees at the hotel are saying that the room was "littered with needles and used feminine hygiene products." [Sun]
  
  
• Former Incredible Hulk star Lou Ferrigno says that the stress of being $400 million in debt is what killed Michael Jackson. [UK Mirror]

• TMZ is reporting that someone is shopping a tape of Leighton Meester and her ex-boyfriend having sex. The tape is supposedly a few years old but features Leighton showing off her "very talented feet." Let your imagination run with that one! [TMZ]
  
  
• Poor Robert Pattinson was just trying to shop for some books at The Strand when he was being harassed by those pesky teenage girls who were trying to sex him right there in the store, so he ran away into the street and got clipped by a cab. What a punk. [NY Post]
  
  
• Jennifer Garner obviously thinks that Kevin Smith is a fat, vulgar slob, according to Kevin Smith, and she is doing everything she can to destroy the man-love that exists between Smith and her husband, Ben Affleck. [Daily News]
  
  
• When Brian WIlliams leaves the news desk to broadcast from the newsroom, producers run all the fatties out and bring in the good-looking interns to pretty up the place. [Page Six]
  
  
• Susan Boyle has been dumped from the Britain's Got Talent tour after she launched into a bizarre rant about her beloved cat, Pebbles. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Beyonce has pissed off some Chelsea club owner because she had agreed to make an appearance at the club's opening for $100,000 but backed out at the last minute. What's a $100,000 these days anyway? [Page Six]
  
  
• Britney Spears is still terrorizing England. The other night she was playing a show in Manchester when she became confused about where she was and yelled out, "what's up London?!" This didn't go over well with the Brits, who are sensitive to these kinds of things. [Sun]
  
  
• Kristen Bell is looking all hot in these pictures of her running around on the beach in Hawaii, but then there's a picture of her playing around in the water with her boyfriend, Dax Shepard, and that just kills all fantasies completely. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Christiano Ronaldo brought three girls back to hotel, not for a foursome or anything like that mind you, but for Pepsi and checkers and an episode of Fawlty Towers or something, because that's what European soccer stars do. [Sun]

Olbermann—who has acknowledged a short fuse and an ego that fires "on all cylinders"—missed three days of work without explanation in late April. According to CityFile, the reason was that his protege Maddow nabbed Affleck and refused to hand him over:

According to a source at the network, Olbermann was livid when he learned that Rachel Maddow had booked Ben Affleck as a guest on her show. Olbermann, it turns out, had been interested in having Affleck on his show, too, and when he heard that Maddow's producers had secured the actor instead, he demanded that the interview be switched from Maddow's nine o'clock broadcast to his own an hour earlier.... Olbermann took the matter to senior management at MSNBC and NBC Universal and asked that they step in and "correct" the situation. That didn't happen, though, and Affleck went on Maddow's show as scheduled on Thursday, April 16. And Olbermann's three-day protest commenced the next day.

After Wonkette linked to CityFile's account, MSNBC spokeswoman Alana Russo sent the site a denial from Olbermann, who explained the absence by saying "that was my first opportunity to take even a long weekend to mourn my mother's death and deal with the many sad logistics subsequent to her sudden passing. The source of this story is a liar and those who spread it without seeking confirmation or refutation are beneath contempt." Olbermann's mother died on Saturday, April 4. He worked the following week, and most of the week after that.

While it seems odd for Olbermann to invoke his mother's death to explain an absence from work when he had shown up for nearly two weeks immediately after her passing, we don't dispute that the man was entitled to time off whenever it suited it him.

But one thing doesn't jibe: As CityFile pointed out, in April Olbermann's fill-in host David Shuster posted a message to Twitter, apparently in response to a curious fan, explaining that the absence was "nothing serious, but, it's flu/allergy season." So, which is it?

We asked Russo for an explanation, but she had no comment for the record.

Sam Zell now admits that his hugely leveraged purchase and subsequent destruction of the now bankrupt Tribune Co. just before the definitive crash of the newspapers business was "a mistake." No shit! So was hiring Lee Abrams, dude. If it makes you feel any better, Sam, Chicago's homeless paper is doing bad too. And New York magazine can't even afford large font!


James Renner, a reporter for the alt-weekly Cleveland Scene, got fired, apparently for sass-talking the paper's owner after the owner decided to spike a story about an affair-having state senator. Now the writer says he's going to file a wrongful termination suit, and, more importantly, he sent the entire spiked story to a blog, which published the whole thing. Streisand effect!

Spotted at the Grey Gardens premiere in NYC last night: NYT publisher Pinch Sulzberger commiserating with PR man Dan Abrams! "They were all smiles and buddy-buddy touches," reports Choire Sicha, spy. He also overheard recently canned Fox gossip columnist Roger Friedman "telling people that the firing was entirely News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch's doing." Parties are a great place to spy!


This whole "the Boston Globe may be closed" situation: what does Ben Affleck think about it? The best actor to ever come out of Boston gave this actual quote to a Globe reporter: ""I fundamentally misunderstood what was going on. Boston.com has 5.6 million readers a month, and yet this hugely successful news gathering operation is going out of business." Which is immediately followed in the story by this parenthetical: "(For the record, Boston.com had 5.7 million unique visitors last month.)" Once again, Ben Affleck has ruined everything.

Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore: "I'm absolutely sure each of the Time Inc. brands I work on will be standing after we're all gone." We'll all be gone next week.

PR trade mag PRWeek (my former employer) is scrapping its weekly print edition and going monthly, starting in June. They'll keep putting out daily news and weekly newsletters online. No, they're not changing the name.

After the jump: Jeff Zucker unveils NBC's new fail-safe plot to produce fewer primetime turkeys.

· Jeff Zucker said he'd consider cutting NBC broadcast hours, or even nights per week, in order to make their business profitable again. We'd love to tell you more about this story, but this un-collapsible ad promoting Hawaiian production on the THR website is covering up the ends of every story. Just for that, we're never blogging from Hawaii. Ever! [THR]
· Fox won Sunday night thanks to a long football game, but Desperate Housewives was the top program. [Variety]

Or rather, Ben Affleck as Keith Olbermann bellowing about his cat, one of a scorching fistful of issues chafing at the imperious MSNBC pundit last week on Saturday Night Live. His outrage over Miss Precious Perfect's rejection from their Upper West Side co-op represents only the most insistent of his convictions, however, and in turn, only one delicious course of the scenery menu Affleck spent nearly nine-minutes devouring. If we didn't know any better, we'd think all this big-shot director really wants to do is act. And really, we couldn't blame him. [SNL]

I mean, he's still living pretty modestly. The first season of Mad Men, given that it's an AMC show, probably didn't pay much and his second season contract most likely didn't give him a huge raise. Last we checked, he was living in Los Feliz and driving a leased Audi. So he's not quite tooling around his own Clooney Manor on Lake Como yet. Nor is Mad Men an enormous success or the Hamm name a household one. Yet. Actually he sort of reminds us of those young lads from Good Will Hunting who stood, some 11 years ago, poised to conquer the world. One went one way, the other another. And that has made all the difference.

Mr. Hamm is, yes, about ten years older now than Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were when they broke out, but he's arguably at the same career crossroads. So now does he go the Affleck route and try to make his movie star name in cheesy blockbusters and just become a Big Famous Person? Or does he tread more stealthily, choosing diverse and difficult actor parts with fancy directors, like Damon did with The Talented Mr. Ripley and All The Pretty Horses. We know how all that turned out, so hopefully Hamm will take Damon route and do the art house pictures and become big ticket popcorn star.

Just like Mr. Clooney, really, who zipped his way through good schlock (the Ocean's movies) and bad schlock (Batman & Robin) before he could really exercise some muscle and get his own creative pet projects made. Clooney has, really, the perfect acting career—a mixture of dark, substantive work and fun lighter fare—and Damon looks to be following ably in his footsteps. We hope that Hamm can do the same. Right now he's got both an indie and a big blockbustery thing in the can, so... two roads diverge.

After the jump: Ben Affleck loses his job, Billy Crystal reclaims his own, and the world contemplates another Star Wars movie.

· Ben Affleck is in talks to star as a downsized corporate hack in Company Men, which we're told calls for a second male lead as well. Matt Damon casting bets are currently paying 2:3. [THR]
· After a six-year hiatus, Billy Crystal will return to the big screen opposite Dwayne Johnson in Tooth Fairy. [Variety]
· On the heels of Capote the Hutt, would George Lucas dare to adapt the new Star Wars video game as an animated feature? On second thought, please don't answer that. [Hero Complex]
· CBS and ABC were up, Heroes was down on the fall TV season's opening night. [Variety]
· Sony is keeping the plot for its newly optioned feature White Dad "under wraps." Meanwhile, the aggressively quick thinkers at Lifetime are angling for a Latino Babysitter MOW sequel as we speak. [THR]

• REVEL WITH A CAUSE [People]
• Previously: Where's Affleck [Defamer]

· Hollywood East is open for business, reports Variety, with everyone from Jennifer Lopez to Kanye West to Cyndi Lauper enlisted to share in the platform platitudes. The bad news: Bono is skipping Denver, leaving a sanctimony vacuum from which organizers are attempting to shield guest speaker Fran Drescher — especially at this altitude.

· Gamble for Democracy! In the best DNC synergy to date, Poker Players Alliance and the Paralyzed Veterans of America are co-hosting a charity tournament Tuesday at Coors Field. Ben Affleck will among the players; the winner gets a seat at the 2009 World Series of Poker.

· "According to the Center For Responsive Politics, which follows political money, [Joe] Biden throughout his U.S. Senate career has raised only $390,298 from the TV/Movies/Music sector, including a mere $187,600 from entertainment industry donors in 2008 while he was running for President." More from Nikki Finke.

· Access Hollywood kicked a note over the transom reporting that Jennifer Hudson will sing the national anthem before Obama's speech Thursday night.

· Sheryl Crow performed at Red Rocks on Sunday, later telling Extra that while Barack Obama inspires her, "Celebrity has sort of become a derogatory term." Not on our watch, Sheryl! Anyway, tune in tonight, etc. etc.

· Speaking of Extra, this just in about the show's Denver correspondent: "Carlos Diaz is reporting all week from Denver’s Democratic National Convention and is available for live shots." But enough about target practice! Zing! Ugh. Politics is hard!

· Paul Colichman, the mogul (and Hillary Clinton supporter) behind Out, The Advocate, the Here network and other gay media monoliths, is outraged by Obama's professed aversion to gay marriage. "If we write checks to candidates who don't stand up for us, aren't we being self-destructive?" We don't know, Paul — Hillary didn't support gay marriage either, and you seem to have survived. Off you go! [Via Queerty]

Boomp3.com

Pregnant Juno star Jennifer Garner asked if the snappers surrounding her could take about ten big steps back before she entered a medical building. As a woman with child, Garner needs all the space that she can get. Garner added, "I'm showing, not like Minnie Driver showing, but us pregnant women can explode at any moment. And in the best interest of me, you, and your sneakers, let's take a couple of steps back and let move on by."

[Photo Credit: X17 ]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Rossdale told Us that he and Stefani didn't know the baby's gender.

"It's just gonna be insane when it comes because then we will find what it is," he said. "And then we get to name the baby! It's gonna be such chaos ... amazing chaos!

"I'm just trying to be there for the wife," he told Us. "Look after her and be cool."

SPOILER ALERT: It was a boy they named — we shit you not — Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale, a moniker reportedly drawn on the fly from the varieties of organic teas once cited in No Doubt's concert rider. Meanwhile, Jason Sehorn knocked up Angie Harmon again, it's their third, etc. Here's hoping September is a more subdued month, or, more accurately, that our heroic celebrities make more actual news than infants. Humor us. Please.

[Photo source: Getty Images]

• Jennifer Garner confirms pregnancy [NYDN]
• Matt Damon's wife Luciana gives birth to girl [AP]
• It's Another Boy for Gwen & Gavin! [US Weekly]

boomp3.com

Looks like Liv Tyler should've asked her Armageddon co-star Ben Affleck for some tips on how to tip on the DL. While at LAX on Tuesday afternoon, Tyler attempted to slide the tip into the skycap's pocket, but the skycap mistook the gesture for something a bit more forward. Tyler explained that she was trying to tip him and didn't mean anything by it. The skycap smile and said, "You could just give it to me. No need to be a Sneaky Pete about things."

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.