Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie managed to leave the Compound That Love Built™ last night, secure that Maddox, Zahara and the Chosen One were being well supervised in their nursery, amusing themselves to no end with the various hand-carved, African farming implements they've been provided with in place of more traditional, "Western" toys. The occasion was Scott Caan's 30th birthday at a Hollywood art gallery, a star-studded event also attended by his Oceans 13 co-star Matt Damon, with nuclear-family-elements in tow. But things quickly grew awkward when, upon Jolie's arrival, she was informed that Jon Voight, the father to whom she hasn't spoken in years, was inside:

We asked for more PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings, and you came through! Keep them coming to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and update us on the most recent fluctuations of Val Kilmer's magical, morphing belly.

There's something inspiring about looking at pictures of celebrities in the time before they made their rare evolutionary leap into the incredibly famous, physically flawless superbeings smiling back at us from the dozens of glossy magazines clogging the supermarket checkout racks. Back then, they were more or less human, not the demigods to whom we gladly sacrifice the family pet upon receiving an encoded message contained within an InTouch caption about Mariska Hargitay's shopping habits. Take, for example, these images of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt from this standard People "Before They Were Stars" feature; can even the most average among us not be heartened to discover that Jolie supported herself for years playing in a Don Dokken cover band while saving for a series of expensive and painful surgeries to make her massive bear paws more cosmetically acceptable, a noble perseverance that eventually was paid off by becoming one of the most beautiful and admired women in the world? Is there any way not to be overwhelmed by hope after looking at this photograph of Pitt's early catalogue work for Modern Fashions for Mildly Autistic Children from Beach Communities, then think about how the handsome actor has managed to overcome his own developmental problems and find incredible success? If these pictures are too much for you to handle, we urge you not to gaze upon this George Clooney yearbook photo, which will so fill you with the joy of the possible that you'll feel immediately compelled to knit his awkward, teenage likeness onto a blanket for your most cherished love one.

Africa's recent run as the hottest continent for Hollywood's charity-minded tastemakers to embrace finally comes to an end with this Gwyneth Paltrow ad, in which the Sliding Doors and Bounce star one-ups good works icon Angelina Jolie by symbolically adopting all of Africa, not just a single, too-trendy nation willing to host a publicity-attracting celebrity birth. However, the trendsetting Jolie knows that public awareness campaigns consist of more than just having one's stylist dig up some beads and smear some eyeshadow on one's face, and will prove that she'll always be ahead of the fashionable do-gooder curve by leaving Africa to move her family into an abandoned well in rural Bangladesh, then turning down all movie projects that refuse to shoot on location in her new homeland.

Either the people at Madame Tussauds in New York have an incredibly sick sense of humor or they truly believe in the divinity of messianic celebrity offspring Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, as they've placed their just-unveiled, graven-in-wax* idol of the Chosen One in a reinterpretation of the nativity scene, complete with stuffed stand-ins of the native African wildlife mysteriously drawn to the birth of Jolie's Word Made Flesh. Thankfully, we are spared the spectacle of Namibian wise men bearing gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and the decapitated heads of overly aggressive freelance photographers, but the tableaux was realistic enough to draw a small crowd of worshipers to the museum, all of whom soon retreated, still palsied and cancer-riddled, after learning firsthand that the startlingly lifelike wax Shiloh posses no miraculous powers of its own.

• Angelina Jolie has officially stolen Jennifer Aniston's Oscar vehicle. She'll play Mariane Pearl, the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl — a role originally written for Aniston. Stolen manchild Brad Pitt will produce, then continue to scratch his ass. [Gatecrasher]
• Radio jock Wendy Williams reveals Method Man's wife is battling cancer, sending the Wu Tang rapper into a lengthy rant on an online hip-hop station. If it had been on Hot97, someone would've been shot by now. [Lowdown (2nd item)]
• The hunger makes Ellen Pompeo crazy: she refuses to do interviews with other Grey's Anatomy cast members and jumps out of a car in the midst of a screaming match with her boyfriend. [Page Six]
• TomKat have had a very exciting, great, amazing and redundant year. [Us Weekly]
• Jackie Chan is sorry he's such a drunk. If you were the star of The Tuxedo, you'd be an alcoholic too. [IMDb]
• Stuck in Lebanon amidst warfare, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain makes one last call to his ex-girlfriend to tell her that he's okay. [Page Six]
• Mr. T renounces gold chains. Welcome to the summer news slowdown, people. [TMZ (3rd item)]

Long before she devoted much of her time to crisscrossing the world to feed individual grains of rice to famine-afflicted infants with a tweezer, and before she was occupied with the even more vital task of bringing to term the most genetically perfect child ever conceived, Angelina Jolie was an actress. Now that the Chosen One has been expelled from her blessed womb and can embark on her own global missions of mercy, Jolie is ready to once again ply her trade. Unsurprisingly, the role she's chosen for her return to the screen is a weightier one than last summer's fucking-and-fighting blockbuster with eventual impregnator/orphan molder Brad Pitt, which while a fine piece of work in the I-can't-decide-whether-to- rip-off-your-shirt-or-shoot-you-in-the-face genre, would hardly be an appropriate choice for the World's Most Socially Conscious Hollywood Citizen now. According to Variety, Jolie will play Mariane Pearl, the widow of kidnapped and cruelly executed journalist Daniel Pearl, and to keep her next career step in the family, partner Pitt's Plan B is producing. And in another family bonus, the project's likely location shoots in Pakistan should afford Jolie plenty of window-shopping time at the country's overflowing orphanages, where a suitable, race/gender/nationality-coordinated addition to her multicultural brood can easily be selected.

• Project Runway mini-spoiler: model Jia Santos makes it to the final three, but her chances at victory are, uh, spoiled when she gets hit by a bus. She's been in intensive care for a month; Bravo execs are thrilled by the potential ratings and send flowers. [Gatecrasher]
• Philippe owner Stratis Morfogen claims that Bonnie Fuller pulled a Star feature on the restaurant after she was forced to wait 20 minutes for a table. Too bad; Star is world-renowned for its dining coverage. [Page Six]
• Beyonce gets slapped with a $1.5 million lawsuit from the businessman who helped broker the launch of her fashion label, claiming that she owes him a good deal of money. [Lowdown]
• Angelina Jolie gets SWF on Jennifer Aniston, reportedly taking a role originally written for Aniston. Meanwhile, Brad Pitt scratches his ass. [TMZ]
• After Hilary Swank sold him out for the sake of a bikini-clad Vanity Fair cover, Chad Lowe cuts himself a line and finds a new ho. [Us Weekly]
• Chevy Chase has such a great relationship with his daughter, he can openly call her a whore. [Page Six]

Sensing that her pretty-boy traveling companion and the father of her first biological child might not be getting enough credit for putting up with her "totally, like, annoying do-gooder stuff," globe-trotting, orphan-collecting philanthropist Angelina Jolie graciously allowed Brad Pitt to pretend that having their baby in Namibia was all his idea for Newsweek's 15 People Who Make America Great feature:

· Without the benefit of paparazzi-eating lions to devour their camera-toting tormenters, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie now has to rely on Malibu's Finest to keep their family safe from unauthorized photography.
· If Paris Hilton wore underwear, hers would burst into flames and singe her ladyparts: "I've never danced on a table in my life."
· Every time a pair of celebrities announces they're divorcing, the baby Jesus poops his swaddling clothes.
· Courtney Love says that both Coke and a sexual lubricant company are all horny for a chance to use Nirvana songs in their commercials.
· This Fark Photoshop contest will scare you shitless, we can promise you that, though we fear that even linking to it will subject us to a lifetime of baby-rape suspicion. The 04:16:54 PM entry is a particularly soul-chilling vision of this alternate reality that we'd like to forget as soon as possible.

• Anderson's Angelina interview is "a watershed moment in the history of CNN." Huh. And we thought it was just kind of boring. [LAT]
• Connie Chung has no regrets — well, at least too few to mention — about her "Thanks for the Memories" farewell. Probably because she's the only person who hasn't had to watch it repeatedly. [TV Guide]
• Dan Rather still eats lunch. [Media Mob/NYO]
• NYP business reporter Tim Arango wants to be on TV. Oh, honey, don't we all? [Jossip]

Oh, dear Jon Stewart. Oh, dear fearless progressive gay-rights-loving Jon Stewart. How many questions, we wondered yesterday, would Jon ask our beloved Anderson Cooper, his guest last night, about the quasi-mysterious "Julio"? The answer: Zero. But Jon did talk Anderson up for a while on the topic of just how hot Angelina Jolie is — while the Coop held up his end of the conversation by giggling like a little girl and shifting nervously in his chair.

Er, BREAKING: After 10 years of mutual love and support, Diddy and PR man Dan Klores are getting divorced. Word is that Puff left DK for another woman — Jill Fritzo at PMK. But just in case Diddy gets involved in another shooting, Klores is staying on a $1K/month retainer. Gotta keep the bases covered.

We recognize that you probably didn't have the patience to sit through two solid hours of Anderson Cooper chatting with Angelina Jolie about her many, many charitable works, so we've helpfully condensed the overlong interview down to the only part you care about: when she talks about her kids. Jolie somewhat shockingly reveals that the birth of Shiloh has factionalized her brood—Maddox has embraced his new sister, while jealous Zahara is still suspicious of the baby. This crucial admission reinforces that Jolie's use of strategic adoption is to correct the undue influence of the the newly-formed Cambodian-Biological bloc on intrafamilial policy, not color-balance her children for the purpose of more striking People cover shoots.

Anderson Cooper had the honor of conducting Angelina Jolie's first American interview since giving birth to baby Shiloh, and oh, how we were excited. It was certain to be a night full of gossip and girl talk, laughter and tears. But Coop, love him as we may, is no Barbara Walters. There was no soft lighting, no tears, no hard-hitting questions about Jennifer Aniston. Instead, we were faced unbelievable boredom: two straight hours of Jolie effusively discussing the plight of refugees, her face lighting up with every new country she could name-check. There was no new information (except that Zahara is jealous of the new baby, which is positively earth-shattering).

We've learned not to necessarily trust all of the celebrity-related news flowing out of the current It-birthing destination of Namibia, but we've never been able to resist the lure of a shadily sourced report from the depths of the internets, especially one that suggests that not everyone in the African nation was thrilled to play host to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie:

Perhaps finding the process of biological birth too frightening and physically taxing, Angelina Jolie has announced that the next addition to her multicultural brood will once again come via adoption. But while her earlier selections of Cambodian and Ethiopian refugees were clearly impulse buys made during her many missions of peace as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N., she and Brad Pitt will put greater care into their next choice:

· The Most Uncomfortable Embrace of the Week Award was won going away by Paramount Classics/Vantage head John Lesher at the Nacho Libre premiere, who couldn't even be bothered to put down his cellphone, Mexican-wrestler-head-on-a-stick, and an unidentified piece of paper while awkwardly clenching Paramount president Gail Berman. A truly disappointing effort from the industry's onetime Master of Hugs.
· Celebrities: They just can't stop reproducing!
· Reuters will certainly be hearing from Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields about this highly inappropriate, suggestive headline: Tom Cruise to take the bullet train — all of it. Filthy, just filthy.
· Sharon Stone is better at getting naked than producing, according to grumpy Kids director Larry Clark.
· Angelina Jolie discovers that actually giving birth is much more frightening than just picking up a refugee at the orphan store.

Over at TMZ.com, Harvey Levin, the Dominick Dunne of people who monitor the entrance and egress of various B-listers at Hollywood's nightclubs, taps into his network to find out about the paparazzi-deflecting countermeasures that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have set up at their Malibu home:

Showing a maturity far beyond that of the average seventeen-day-old infant, young Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt decided that curing the polio outbreak in her birth country of Namibia might be too showy an initial display of her powers, and instead opted for the more modest first miracle of assisting a Denver boutique in moving some overpriced t-shirts: