ABC interviews crazy fireman impersonator Peter Braunstein. Catch it tonight on "20/20"! [ABC]

· First Cavemen, now Jim Belushi. What new ways will ABC find to humiliate George Lopez?
· A bizarre twist in a thoroughly unpleasant story.
· Paris Hilton: The NDA.
· Here's an early-ish review of Transformers; we're not entirely sure, but we suspect that when a reviewer says he wants to "hunt down Michael Bay and stab him in the face-eye," it's not necessarily a rave.
· NBC rock star Ben Silverman: The Simpsons character.

Grey's Anatomy casualty Isaiah Washington certainly hasn't been keeping quiet about his unceremonious shitcanning from the ABC series, having repeatedly broken his silence on the subject, clarified his silence-breaking, and further appended those clarifications to any news outlet still interested in listening. Until now, the target of his fury was gay mastermind T.R. Knight, whom he had accused of single-handedly orchestrating one of the most ingenious behind-the-scenes power plays in recent, horny-doctor-drama history. In an exclusive interview with Newsweek, however, Washington reveals how nothing in this workplace disaster was what it seemed:

· Contrary to a previous report, the head of Germany's Bundesanstalt fuer Immobilienaufgaben says that the government won't stop Tom Cruise and his Valkyrie production from shooting on their historical military sites because he's a Scientologist, and should grant the movie a film permit as long as Cruise promises that any massage-and-Dianetics tents he plans on installing on their set won't distract members of the Ministry of Defense from their day-to-day duties. [Variety]
· On Wednesday night, Fox's dancing competition triumphs over ABC's celebrity-impersonator and insane-inventor competitions, as well as NBC's struggling-comedian competition. Please, do yourself a favor and cover your television in a sheet that you swear not to remove until September. [THR]
· The following elements have been attached to Body of Lies, an adaptation of a CIA-set novel by David Ignatius: actor Russell Crowe; actor Leonardo DiCaprio; director Ridley Scottl screenwriter William Monahan. [Variety]
· Do you ache for more Tom Selleck MOW appearances? Suffer no more, for CBS has ordered another installment of the actor's Jesse Stone series. [THR]
· Hunky-but-still-serious actor Ryan Gosling joins Mummy refugee Rachel Weisz in Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones. [Variety]

Breaking his silence about his controversial firing from Grey's Anatomy for at least the third time in the two weeks since ABC made showrunner Shonda Rhimes do their dirty work, Isaiah Washington granted an exclusive interview with KeithBoykin.com, further elaborating on yesterday's Houston Chronicle air-clearing about nemesis T.R. Knight's alleged role in orchestrating the actor's dismissal from TV's top-rated, hot-doctors-getting-it-on drama. Said Washington about Knight's behind-the-scenes machinations on the Grey's set:

Having trouble keeping up with the Paris Hilton media circus? You're not alone. It's hard, what with all the back and forth: she's being interviewed by Barbara Walters! No, wait, she's being interviewed by Meredith Vieira! NBC is paying her $1 million to be interviewed! No one pays for interviews! NBC never had a deal with Paris! The Post is reporting that People will pay Paris in the neighborhood of $300,000 for "exclusive" photos! People doesn't pay for interviews, but if Paris just happens to do an interview before, during, or after her photo shoot, well, you know... Basically, this has turned into one great big media crazystorm, which is just how Paris (and her slick spokesman, Mike Sitrick—you remember him from his work with Ron Burkle!) seem to like it.

Perhaps the only thing more depressing than calculating that if Paris Hilton receives the $1 million NBC is reportedly paying her for their World! Exclusive! Post-Jail! Interview!, she effectively will have earned $43,478.26 for each of the 23 days she served in prison is reading about the behind-the-scenes chess match (chess is the game where one person places a stack of twenty-dollar bills on a table, and then the other player counters by dumping a Hefty bag full of hundreds on top of it, right?) that resulted in the Peacock's big "get." The NY Times reports that NBC was triumphant in the Hilton showdown because ABC, like the tragic loser in so many ethnic-joke duels, brought a knife to a gunfight:

According to various reports—more on that later—one network or another has agreed to pay or to not pay a large or even more large amount of money to Paris Hilton for an interview. The network will not be ABC—although they figured the "credibility" and close connection Barbara Walters has with the Hilton family (oh, plus an offer of $100,000) would snag them the first post-jail interview with Paris Hilton. Some reports say Walters was out-credibilitied by Meredith Viera and at least $650,000. Others say NBC's offer is $1 million. NBC says they don't pay for interviews, and fast-talking Paris publicist Mike Sitrick says the same, which means the opposite is true.

· Imagine's Brian Grazer will superproduce an adaptation of the graphic novel Cowboys and Aliens for DreamWorks and Universal, a project the spikey-haired seeker described as the "perfect realization of all the cowboys-meeting-aliens-related ideas I've been quietly developing since I was a hyperactive six years old locked in my bedroom with a chest full of toys." [Variety]
· Fox's show about people who think they can dance continues to shame their one about people who think they can direct movies, pulling in more than triple the viewers of the last On The Lot installment. [THR]
· Another famously overweight TV personality rumored to be under consideration to replace Bob Barker is Drew Carey. [Variety]
· Advertisers give a $2.4 billion upfront vote of confidence to Steve McPherson's vision for ABC, with one Madison avenue booster gushing, "Have you heard about this Cavemen thing? It's like a sitcom and car insurance commercial all rolled into one! Think of what they could do with that Coke ad with the polar bears." [THR]
· Stripping off his shirt and smearing his entire body in warpaint, CEO Howard Stringer whipped 7,000 employees into a frenzy at a shareholder ceremony in which he dramatically declared himself the "Sony Warrior." [Variety]

Readers of the hard-copy of today's Variety were greeted by a promotional cover needily advocating the Emmy-worthiness of the entire Grey's Anatomy ensemble, including recovering castectomy patient Isaiah Washington, whose vaguely menacing photo is separated from that of nemesis T.R. Knight by a five-actor buffer.

As Isaiah Washington processes the complex feelings about his high-profile axing from Grey's Anatomy, downgrading himself from "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore," to the far more reasonable, "saddened, but will gladly work with the powers that be to see if there isn't some third solution out there that better suits everyone's interests," questions still linger as to who ordered the whacking and when. According to an AP report, it was not the decision of Grey's showrunner Shonda Rhimes—who "wept" when she made the call on Thursday—but rather a troika of high-ranking ABC studio and network execs:

"Breaking the silence" he's maintained since his firing from Grey's Anatomy (it's hard to pinpoint the exact moment ABC knew they had to let him go, but our guess would be that once they saw tirade victim T.R. Knight draped with a feeble Labrador on the cover of The Advocate, his fate was sealed), former TV doctor Isaiah Washington opens up to EW, elaborating on the complicated, post-shitcanning emotions insufficiently evoked by his ominous "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" public statement and his flack Howard Bragman's outraged, "kicked in the gut" follow-up. Washington expresses frustration that his successful completion of the apology/gayhab/PSA gauntlet jointly designed for him by his publicist, GLAAD, and the network was not enough to save his job, and discusses the reaction (and non-reactions) of his showrunner and castmates:

With Rosie O'Donnell gone from The View, the majority of her days since her abrupt, contentious departure spent dictating angry haikus to an assistant while suspended in her upside-down depression-therapy rig, ABC has been quietly auditioning potential replacements. According to Star Magazine, they have settled on former Patrick-Swayze-channeling conduit Whoopi Goldberg:

Isaiah Washington's 12-word response to his firing—"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"—hinted ominously that the newly downsized actor had retaliatory measures in mind. In one of a number of disturbing scenarios, we imagine the actor silently stalking the halls of ABC, picking off random receptionists, assistants, and executives with the most bigoted, spittle-flecked invectives he could muster, before ultimately turning the slurs onto himself. Howard Bragman, the actor's publicist, tries to explain Washington's seething rage at having lost his job after submitting to every demeaning stipulation ordered by his superiors:

In the end, not even a beautifully acted public service announcement about the power of words to hurt homosexual castmates who displease fiery, intolerant performers, nor an impassioned plea to become gay himself, were enough to save embattled Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington's job, as ABC Studios decided yesterday not to invite the mercurial Dr. McChokey back for another season. Through his publicist, the actor reacted to his dismissal by quoting Network, saying, (and this, bizarrely, is not something we made up—don't people have publicist to stop them from doing things like this?) "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," a cryptic expression of frustration and rage that has us vaguely worried that a slur-flinging rampage could be in the offing; victim/tormentor T.R. Knight would probably be smart to use some of his generous raise to get out of town for a little while, until Washington's anger over the loss of a steady paycheck subsides.

As this afternoon drags on, we've become increasingly desperate for any material not related to either The House-Arrested Socialite Who Shall Not Be Named, At Least In This Post or the imminent destruction of various entertainment industry outposts along Wilshire Boulevard. But salvation finally arrived in the form of this reader-supplied cameraphone photo of the sky above the Fox lot, illustrating ABC Family's efforts to publicize Kyle XY, a basic cable television show that our research has revealed to be about a teenage boy's struggles to remove a tight-fitting undershirt. Additionally, the bothersome buzzing of skywriting biplanes (really, this stunt never gets old!) prompted some others to document the difficult of properly rendering a airborne promotional message on a windy day:

· HBO and Tom Hanks' Playtone are close to a deal to adapt the Vincent Bugliosi book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy into a miniseries that would finally pay some attention to the allegedly shadowy circumstances surrounding the too-long-ignored event of JFK's untimely death. [Variety]
· John McTiernan will direct the "Las Vegas action thriller" High Stakes. The director's impressive list of credits include Die Hard, The Last Action Hero, and lying to the FBI about his involvement with wiretapper-to-the-stars Anthony Pellicano. [THR]
· Bourne franchise BFFs Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass are close to reigniting their professional love affair with an adaptation of the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City for Universal. [Variety]
· Newly installed NBC Universal TV Studio president Katherine Pope celebrates her promotion by dumping a huge pile of money in Heroes creator/executive producer Tim Kring's lap. [THR]
·And in other "showrunners getting filthy rich" news, Scrubs' Bill Lawrence (pictured, looking stunned by his staggering wealth) signs an eight-figure, four-year overall deal with ABC Studios, who bought him out of his NUTS contract. [Variety]

Grey's Anatomy's T.R. Knight, who reluctantly found himself the face of a new generation of TV actors forced to openly acknowledge their sexuality after a meanie co-star with a toilet mouth and nasty temper called them a bad word during a Hollywood workplace fracas, has stated that he was in the dark regarding his fate on the show. Similarly, gayhabbed nemesis Isaiah Washington—recent star of his very own "don't call people epithets, it hurts their feelings" PSA—was also questioning whether his services would again be required at Seattle Grace, especially after the season-ending cliffhanger had him skipping town. Cast members have recently said they were confident everyone would return—something EW.com confirms today through a well-placed source:

A Defamer operative who shall remain nameless so that he won't suffer the public humiliation of admitting that he was perusing the official ABC website for Desperate Housewives (which, much to our bafflement, continues to exist on the schedule despite its removal from our DVR season pass list three episodes into the second season—doesn't hitting the delete button send an immediate cancellation notice to Steve McPherson?) pointed us to this curiously blank "About" page, which seems to indicate that someone expects multiple Emmys are coming in mid-September. We suppose it's possible that the space is intended to recognize the show's former winners, but we prefer to think that its producers are boldly servicing notice to the hyberverbal bitches of Grey's Anatomy, who've been hogging the network spotlight for far too long.

It's been way too long since we've read a good story hinting at the unspeakable horrors that would inevitably follow a potential Writers Guild strike, but today's Variety piece on how a work stoppage will impact reality TV production has at least temporarily given us the testicle-retracting scare we've been craving. While Var says that it's "not necessarily the case" that a strike would good for the unscripted sector, it's impossible not to imagine the networks quickly devolving from the mere reality-riddled disappointments they currently are into full-blown, post-Apocalyptic, Mark-Burnett-controlled hellscapes in which nary a union writer credit will be found: