Today's Times Arts section:

· According to Us Weekly, peripatetic Hollywood do-gooders Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have just moved into a fourth, "charity vacation" home in New Orleans, whose local hardships will help teach the couple's overprivileged baby-blob about the harsh realities of life.
· CAA Sports is expected to soon be eating babies on behalf of LeBron James and Allen Iverson.
· The makers of the Jack Bauer action figure learned the hard way not to trust their prototype to Keifer Sutherland, especially when he's planning a bender.
· Golden Globes viewers probably noticed that something wasn't quite right with the zombie pitchman the Redenbachers greedily reanimated to sell some popcorn.
· Who could possibly believe that someone in this town might become a little obnoxious when given some power?

Today's LAT "Cause Celebre" column, which covers the hottest do-gooding trends that you'll soon see your favorite starlet promote in the pages of Us Weekly with a Kitson-bought t-shirt bearing a slogan like TEAM ANTI-GENOCIDE, profiles International Crisis Group senior adviser John Prendergast, Hollywood's go-to guy for Africa-related issues. Sadly, when Prendergast returns home from a trip to L.A., he finds that his peers in Washington openly sniff at the unpleasant scent of Show Business he carries back with him:

Recently, we came across a Page Six blind item that seemed to us (and a few of you) to be hinting that Angelina Jolie had nostalgically dabbled in smack with an old rock-star pal recently. Today's Page Six shines more light on the subject.

In a post on On The Town, Var's new blog covering the industry party and events beat, a reporter describes an uncomfortable moment she shared with Brad Pitt at the premiere for God Grew Tired of Us, a documentary about the Sudanese civil war that Angelina Jolie's orphan-gathering companion executive produced:

· A fan from the Something Awful forums donates some free Oscar stumping to Universal on behalf of Children of Men. Warning: The video contains some spoilers, so watch at your own peril. [via Risky Bix]
· Mel Gibson's beachside kingdom is currently on fire. (Well, probably not his house specifically, just the parts of Malibu he claims to own when he gets liquored up and confronts a mouthy, sugar-titted cop.)
· A TV critic apologizes to Courtney Cox after reversing his position on whether or not she's spankworthy.
· As it turns out, Angelina Jolie is totally fine with Madonna's purchase of Malawian children.
· Our blogging siblings over at Gizmodo and Kotaku are busy nerding it up at CES, while Jalopnik is covering the Detroit Auto Show. Meanwhile, as we previously hinted, we're watching The 'Bu smolder on the local news.

Those few tips we've received today that haven't been about a funny smell have been chastising us for overlooking this blind item in today's Page Six:

In an upcoming interview with the UK edition of Elle, occasional actress and globe-trotting orphan collector Angelina Jolie admits that she has a special fondness for the members of her multicultural brood that she carefully hand-selected from the Third World's finest baby bazaars, telling the magazine that she finds it easier to open her heart to Cambodian Maddox and Ethiopian Zahara than to biological daughter Shiloh, the genetically perfect, still-amorphous baby-blob rendered totally, like, boring by her privileged birth:

· Pretty much every dream we've had about Angelina Jolie since the Chosen One's birth has looked exactly like this stunning painting. [via BoingBoing]
· Jesus! He's marrying you! Be nice! Fuck!
· Not even in her wildest dreams did Demi Moore imagine she'd find a 25-year-old himbo willing to give up his best groupie-porking years to shack up with her.
· Jalopnik's got the Japanese trailer for Michael Bay's Transformers movie. Good news: Shit still blows up in this version.

• "This painting addresses the celebrity worship cycle." [Kate's Studio via Boing Boing]
  

We alerted you yesterday to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's charity work in Costa Rica, handing out presents to Colombian refugee children. But the flawless philanthropists have no monopoly on good deeds, as celebrities from every letter of the rigid Hollywood caste system came out to help those less needy. A round-up:
· Survivor host Jeff Probst and his girlfriend, former Survivor contestant Julie Berry, spent Christmas serving dinner to patrons of the Wayside Soup Kitchen in Portland, Maine. Just for fun, Probst suggested serving meals to four separate lines divided by race, an experiment soup kitchen officials quickly cancelled after a bearded man in the white line started shouting that the two individuals in the far shorter Asian line were receiving unfairly generous turkey portions. [Canada.com]
· In further New England celebrity charity news, Adam Sandler sent Stephanie and Kevin Hudon, two teenage siblings from New Hampshire suffering with cancer, a hard-to-find Playstation 3 and swag bag, in the hopes that the blowing away of virtual Nazis with high neuro-artificial-intelligence would temporarily take their minds off their troubles. [AP]

While you were desperately rifling through piles of Banana Republic wrapping tissue searching for the all-valuable gift receipt that would spare you from a fate of itchy sweater hell, year-round Christmas angel Angelina (it's right there in her first name!) Jolie and short-leashed civil partner Brad Pitt were once again focusing their energies on making the world a better place, one Colombian refugee baby at a time:

• Brad and Angelina spent Christmas helping Colombian refugees in Costa Rica, but failed to return to the U.S. with any additional orphans for their family. [Hot Momma]
  

If you're the type to pick up the latest issue of People, pore over a two-page spread about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's latest, empty-handed orphan-acquisition trip through a developing nation, then hurl the magazine against the wall, frustrated that that couple is just being too damn choosy ("What was wrong with the kid with that adorable cowlick from the refugee shelter in Karachi?!" ) about the next addition to their multicultural brood, we urge you to take a deep breath and relax as Jolie herself once again reminds you about the complexity of intrafamilial race-matching:

The contested 'exclusivity' of the new shots of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's "natural-born" offspring (way to give Z and Mad even more issues, Daily News!) doesn't really interest us that much, but in case it interests you, here you have it: Hello! (a UK publication, natch) claimed that it had a World Exclusive, when in fact it only had US rights. People actually has US rights, which is why their ed in chief, Larry Hackett, was holding up the photos on the Today show yesterday. Neither publication really wanted the shots leaked all over the internet, but whatcha gonna do.
What does interest us is how the shots were sold to the publications by Trevor Nelson of the Endeavor Group. According to WWD, Nelson

A fearless photographer for Hello! magazine risked the searing of his retinas by training his camera lens on Shiloh Nouvel, the genetically flawless biological offspring of globe-trotting United Nations Goodwill Ambassadors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, in an attempt to document the baby's progress from Chosen newborn to toddling Savior of All Mankind (pictured, gently bathed in the distracting divine light that will continue to fade as she ages) for the future generations of children who will be delivered from poverty, pestilence, and substandard nanny care by the messianic celebrity progeny. We recommend that you only view the other photos from the spread (taken during the family's recent, fruitless orphan-recruiting trip to Cambodia) through a pane of smoked glass, as gazing on the unfiltered Good of Shiloh's visage will result in an irreversible blindness that not even direct exposure to the miracle-brining child can possibly cure.

· While you were gorging on turkey and stuffing, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie cruised Ho Chi Minh City on a scooter, continuing their tireless search for another adoptee to add to their family. Sadly, they came up short, but drowned their disappointment in some delicious Vietnamese food.
Will Arnett seems to have really thought this last meal thing through, so we'll assume that his failure to specify that the in-mouth sundae would be prepared by hookers was just an oversight.
Even though Alec Baldwin is baffled about why "a substantial number of brave men and women have signed up, for whatever reasons, to defend us," he nonetheless thanks them for their service.
· Carson Daly is proud that ex-fianc e Tara Reid is talking about her poor choices in plastic surgeons, happy to be rid of her.

Following the recent student/parent/ bodyguard/paparazzi stampede and pile-on at a Mumbai school used as a shooting location for A Mighty Heart (video of the terrifying, anarchic events available here), flawlessly bone-structured altruists Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have now found themselves in the unlikely position of having to defend themselves against some rare, bad press. Jolie has released a statement calling the allegation that one of her three bodyguards arrested in the melee called a parent a "bloody Indian" a "horrible rumor." But it's Brad Pitt, perhaps realizing the potential threat the impromptu and much talked about fight club could pose to their global good standing, who has taken the formidable step of going directly to the top with his damage control efforts, pleading their case to none other than Indian Oprah. From an Extra press release:

While Mumbai train commuters disrupted the shoot of A Mighty Heart earlier this week by hurling their offspring at star Angelina Jolie in hopes that she might instantly fall in love with one of the adorable, projectile adoptee candidates and add it to her ever-expanding multinational brood, parents at a school where the production was filming on Thursday seemed much less eager to assist the actress in filling out her family. Once the gates to the school were thrown open at the completion of the day's shooting, concerned mothers quickly stormed in to retrieve their children, hoping to rescue them before Jolie could form a downtime attachment to an extra and attempt to spirit one off to Hollywood. The unfortunate hysteria, complete with reports of rough treatment of the stampeding parents by abusive bodyguards, was completely unnecessary, as Jolie obviously would have no interest in acquiring a child old (and well-off) enough to attend such a school.

The Indian populace has been faithfully following Angelina Jolie's time in their country, where's she's currently shooting A Mighty Heart, assembling in droves Monday to watch as Jolie and co-star Daniel Futterman shot a scene for the film aboard a crowded train in Mumbai. While security guards kept the throng from approaching the actors, they were unable to stop a number of onlookers, sympathetic that the refugee-coveting humanitarian Jolie was unable to find a suitable new child to adopt on her recent trip to New Delhi, from ruining several takes by tossing their children towards Jolie, urging her to take them back to Malibu, where they could enjoy a life of People magazine spreads and Entertainment Tonight appearances not available to the average Indian commuter. Jolie, however, graciously declined the crowd's selfless support of her brood-expanding endeavors, politely explaining to the overly generous parents that their offspring didn't qualify for adoption under her strict "orphan only" policy.