· Well, at least we know where Mike Huckabee stands on the Jamie Lynn Spears issue. To the rest of the candidates: We're waiting.
· After taking the whole family to see The Water Horse, Angelina Jolie is now intent on adopting one of the adorable baby Nessies to add to her ever-growing, multicultural brood.
· How one laid off below-the-line staffer learned to stop worrying and love the strike.
· Now you have no excuse for driving on New Year's Eve (unless you plan on spending it anywhere on the Westside): "All Metro Rail lines will run all night, every 20 minutes."
· The Oscar ballots are officially in the USPS's hands now: God be with them, and may they never end up in the dead-letter office Santa's P.O. Box.
· Now, thanks to the internet, you can stare indecisively at the contents of other people's fridges from around the world.

The life of beneficient Hollywood superstar/globetrotting United Nations Goodwill Ambassador is not an easy one; just when she thinks she may have finally found a break in her schedule that might allow her to spend more quality time with her well-meaning, monosyllabic life-partner and their multicultural brood of adopted refugees, trouble erupts in a far-flung village, its imperiled residents shine their Jolie Signal (the gun-toting silhouette of Lara Croft) against the darkened night sky, and our heroine iis torn away from her family once again:

As long as we're on the subject of a certain high-profile couple and their extravagantly large family: "Los Feliz has the reputation of being a safe and peaceful LA neighborhood. But shortly after 4 a.m. on Nov. 27, gunshots rang out — just 25 feet from where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie live with their four children. Life & Style has learned exclusively that a gunman, believed to be driving a Saab, fired two shots, striking a Range Rover owned by a local resident and hitting the driver's- side window of a camper van used by Brad and Angie's security team. 'It was crazy,' neighbor John Martinez tells Life & Style. 'If anybody had been in the car, he or she could've been killed'." It's certainly a relief that this story seems to have no direct connection to the mag's WHERE'S SHILOH? cover piece; no foul play is suspected in the mysterious disappearance of the The Chosen One from the pages of the supermarket checkout rags, just Jolie's preference for keeping the the boring blob away from the paparazzi until she learns to play to the camera as well as her more interesting siblings. [L&S]

· Paramount acquires the rights to the life of spy Kathi Lynn Austin, whose arms-trafficking and terrorism-related adventures could become "an action vehicle" for Angelina Jolie that will ultimately bear little to no resemblance to the intelligence operative's real life. [Variety]
· To help CBS survive the strike/break the wills of writers, Les Moonves plans to repurpose edited versions of Showtime series like Dexter for use on his content-starved broadcast network, though it's unclear whether this idea will include a fucking-lite version of Californication. [THR]
· Publicists love Judd Apatow! He'll be named 2007's "outstanding film showman" at the 45th annual Flackies. [Variety]

Banksy, the Bristol-born graffiti artist, has a show opening December 2nd at the Vanina Holasek Gallery in Chelsea. If you've been to Angelina Jolie's rumpus room recently you might have seen his work hanging on her wall (she bought one of his paintings at his LA show) or you might have bought one of his books at Urban Outfitters. Either way, you must have been struck by all the issues he raises in his work like...um...um....who the fuck pays £200,000 for spraypaint-and-slogan sophomoric crap? (To be fair, it did feature a white family having a picnic and African orphans, two things the Jolie-Pitt household loves.) But Banksy's art isn't just issue-based, it's also a god investment, as per a press release for the show: "His art has escalated in value faster than pretty much any substance known to man." Also, "Banksy images are even being used to sell 900k condos in Williamsburg." Suck on that, Andy Warhol!

• Despite their matching dice tattoos, model-heiress Lydia Hearst claims she and testes-elephantiasis sufferer Cisco Adler are not, like, a thing. [Page Six]
  

As you pour yourself the first of the countless glasses of whiskey that will allow you to survive yet another Thanksgiving feast with the dysfunctional clan whose lack of support and grudgingly given affection drove you to seek out a life in Hollywood, Star editor Bonnie Fuller asks that you consider the even more distressing plight of your celebrity betters. If you can't even endure a meal with your relatives without an emotion-blunting buzz on, how can you expect Angelina Jolie, whose family dynamics are undoubtedly far more turbulent than your own, to weather a sure-to-be-tense Turkey Day at Brad Pitt's parent's house without suffering a nervous breakdown? Blogs Fuller:

This Thanksgiving, as you add the last pat of butter to the mashed potatoes while trying to ignore your great uncle's comments about how your mother's like Crisco because she's fat in the can, be thankful that you're not Brad Pitt. So says Bonnie Fuller, who, in her latest HuffPo blog post, points out that she believes her own magazine's report about how strained things could be at the Pitt home in Missouri on Thursday!

There will be no shortage of glistening, lifelike CGI flesh on display in Robert Zemeckis's latest masterwork, opening today. The character of Grendel's Mother, for example—naked, dipped in gold, and outfitted with a prehensile braid and fuck-me pumps—will give audiences a reasonable approximation of things only Brad Pitt was meant to see. Others, however, such as the protagonist himself (voiced and performed by Sexy Beast star Ray Winstone), use their human inspiration as mere jumping-off points, after which a cutting-edge series of gut-reducing, ab-defining filters are applied, resulting in a ripped, battle-ready hero worthy of the name Beowulf.

Forgetting the whole making-out-with-her-brother thing, WebTV founder and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman made Angelina Jolie. And actors John Malkovich and Anthony Hopkins. Or at least, his company is responsible for some of the creepy digital effects in their latest movie,Beowulf, according to Bits. What's it mean to you? Well, now you know who to blame for the latest embarrassment of the film's director, Robert Zemeckis, the disgraced genius behind Back to the Future.

What with the bleak, suspended state of things these days, the time seems right for Film Threat's annual Frigid 50 list, celebrating 2007's "coldest people in Hollywood." Some of their choices might surprise you—particularly the top spots, occupied by President George W. Bush at #1 (easy swipes in Transformers and Michael Moore's oeuvre make him "as much a cinema celebrity as the next despotic tyrant,") and Angelina Jolie at #2, for whom they prescribe "adopting an American kid and making movies that people want to see."

• Angelina Jolie's massive rump tried to escape her Versace leather pants at a 'Beowulf' premiere, which, by the way, doesn't 'Beowulf' look terrible? [Us Weekly]

· Peter Jackson's feature adaptation of The Lovely Bones suffers a severe cast downgrade as Mark Wahlberg steps in to replace Ryan Gosling, who's departing the project following the always-popular "creative differences." [Variety]
· Talks are underway to bring a reality series starring Scottish psychic Derek "The Baby Mind Reader" Ogilive to America, centering around his possibly telepathic ability to translate the secret language of an infant's mysterious cries, gurgles, and gassy smiles into something understandable by parents. [THR]
· Superman Returns writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris bail on the franchise, opting not to come back to write a sequel. Warner Bros. denies rumors that the studio is planning on hiring new writers to start the Superman saga over yet again, avoiding the potential Superboy Problem presented by the introduction of Kal-El's bastard, half-Kryptonian offspring introduced in Returns. [Variety]

Upon noticing that adoption hobbyists Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie appear to have been afflicted with an acute case of wanderlust, a concerned Page Six contacted "psychotherapist/social worker Puja Hall" for her expert thoughts on how their failure to plant firm roots could lead to developmental problems for their pancultural brood:

Angelina and Brad are off to California and so the days of dropping off little Maddox at the Lycee Francais every day are over. Says a parent: "I've heard other parents saying, 'We're glad they're gone.'" [NYO]

• Jennifer Lopez plans to announce her long-awaited (by the kind of people who await such things) pregnancy at Saturday's concert at MSG, apparently. [Page Six]
  

No baby bump, no problem! Disappointed that photos of a healthier-seeming Angelina Jolie might not support their speculation about the orphan-collecting actress's gestation of a second biological offspring, InTouch did some creative cropping and claimed that she's carrying the extra 10 lbs. of baby weight in her rack. [Page Six]

It's not everyday you get to see Angelina Jolie tear up in front of a blinking Nick Kristoff, but if your fantasies involve the star of Tomb Raider getting lachrymose in front of a Times columnist, today's your lucky day. [Jezebel]

While we'd like to think that every impoverished child Angelina Jolie encounters on her world travels will eventually find him or herself a member of the seemingly always-expanding Pitt-Jolie clan, she cannot, in fact, adopt them all.

• Kate Hudson was once again spotted candying up the arm of fug supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle. [R&M, fourth item]