Perhaps feeling the hot breath of gay cowboy up-and-comer Heath Ledger on his neck in the Best Actor race, award frontrunner Philip Seymour Hoffman will appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday to add to his lead by revealing The Personal Demons He Vanquished On The Path To Oscar Glory:

From — where else? — today's Thursday Styles:

Being nominated for an Oscar does not automatically guarantee that you'll wear clean pants to the luncheon.
· Back by incredibly popular demand: Hey, unicorns!
When PETA's crazies take on Paris Hilton, we actually have to think for a second before taking sides.
You know it's a slow day at Page Six when...
· We knew it was only a matter of time before someone put the gay cowboy song into the gay cowboy movie.

Heath Ledger can look forward to never again having to answer the "What's it like to pretend to be a gay cowboy?" question, as the query is soon to be replaced by its not-quite-as-titillating successor, the "What's it like to pretend to be a heroin junkie?" question:

· Gallery of the Absurd whipped up some truly inspired Valentines starring your favorite tabloid fodder. Best of all, the Tom Cruise card now conveniently doubles as a celebration of the continuation of his creepy relationship!
· Oh yeah, about that Cruise break-up story: In one glance, you can review Life & Style's amazing track record in breaking stories.
· We don't know how many times we've found ourselves arguing that TV's greatest love affair is between Rory and Lorelai.
· One of these days, someone on eBay is going to figure out how to take advantage of this Brokeback Mountain craze.

Obsessive chronicler of all things Brokebackian Towleroad notes today that Willie Nelson, whose cover of "He Was A Friend of Mine" accompanies the film's closing credits, has recorded yet another ode to rancher-on-rancher romance: the somewhat less subtly titled "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other." It premiered on a very confused Howard Stern's show this morning (audio available courtesy of The Malcontent) and was made available for purchase on iTunes. The Dallas Morning News reports:

A Defamer operative generously fulfilled our greedy request for a report on last night's screening and cast Q & A for Brokeback Mountain at the Aero, during which Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger once again faced the "What's it like to pretend to be gay cowboys?" question:

• Behold Philippe Starck's Downtown Chandelier of Insanity, to be housed in his Broad Street condos. Luxury units still available, if the lighting fixture doesn't scare the shit out of you. [Curbed]
• After five cold, long years, Fabio is back and still completely in awe of that margarine. [AdAge (reg. req'd)]
• The perfect singles mixer: Girls meet, get wasted, bitch about dating and men. Men show up 2 hours later and are promptly torn to shreds. [LWE]
• If you're anything like us, you saw Brokeback Mountain and immediately wanted to be a Gay cowboy. Now a ranch in Montana is offering a vacation that will allow you to be exactly that. [Mirror UK]
• There was once a time when it was OK to say "Ayds helps you lose weight." [YouTube]
• A little too Donnie Darko for comfort. [CNN]
• First Grilled Cheese NYC closes its doors, and now 71 Clinton is nearing the end. A moment of silence, please, for the death of the Lower East Side's original gentrifier. [The Strong Buzz]
• A numerical study of the popularity of the phrase "more cowbell." Fittingly, it comes out on top of Clay Aiken — but who doesn't? [Parenthetical Remarks]

· You make the (very tough) call: Which is the more important piece of gay cinema history: Jake Gyllenhaal's shirt from Brokeback Mountain or Vin Diesel's pants from xXx? [The Reeler has more charity auction fun.]
· Bono confronts the one living being who might not be completely bored with him yet.
· Hey, Harrison Ford, try not to sound so f'ing excited about the only movie sequel we really care about: ''I'd like to get it over with so I don't have to answer the god-damned questions [about it] anymore.''
· Mena Suvari may have met her own Federline, though with a crucial difference—her new boyfriend seems to be employed.

For those frustrated that Brokeback Mountain's shirtless-wrasslin' gay cowboy action is confined to the big screen of their local theater and not, say, available in some sort of computer simulation form, take heart: Our friend at Towleroad has alerted us that someone's figured out a way to move Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar into your Sims neighborhood, where the star-crossed cowpokes can finally set up the ranch of their dreams. It would probably be a small matter to give them a pair of wives who willfully ignore their frequent fishing trips for the sake of cinematic verisimilitude, but in your carefully constructed digital utopia, why should they have to bother with such a charade?

· Never mind what we mused about earlier; Harrison Ford seems to believe his career is going to get a healthy dose of Indy 4 pretty soon.
· We knew there was something too perfect about all those luscious, luscious sheep in Brokeback Mountain.
· Goldenfiddle did it perfectly in seven words: Glenn Close marries male version of herself.
· Today's mystery: If it wasn't Marilyn Monroe, exactly which dead blonde was James van Praagh communing with through those hair curlers?
· You make the call: face transplant or Mackenzie Phillips?

· MGM is close to a deal with the Weinstein Co. to become their exclusive distributor. The pact will be reflected in an update of their classic logo, replacing Leo the Lion with Bob Weinstein lying flat on his belly, roaring ferociously at an assistant who brought him a regular Diet Coke instead of a Diet Coke with Splenda. [Variety]
· The WGA gives its top screenwriting awards to Crash and Brokeback Mountain, for original and adapted screenplays, respectively. Paul Haggis tearfully dedicates the award to "all the carjackers I've known, or know, or will be blessed enough to come to know." Then, kissing his index finger and pointing it to the back of the room, he concluded, "This one's for you guys." [Variety]
· David Cronenberg's next film will be the Bruce Wagner-written Maps to the Stars, in what promises to do for showbiz what Dead Ringers did for gynecology. Hollywood execs with gaping head wounds: a marriage made in heaven! [Variety]
· Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg reteam with The Yards director James Gray for We Own the Night, in which the duo play campus feminists who mount a candlelight vigil, that they may fear for their safety no longer. [Variety]
· Sexual Healing, the Marvin Gaye biopic long in turnaround, has finally been greenlit, with Jesse L. Martin in the lead, with the contingency that all the depressing "shot by his father" ending stuff be replaced with an uplifting Rent-inspired finale revolving around the number of seconds in a week. [THR]

Watch it with the twink you love.

But then we saw Chocolate Cake City's Brokeback To The Future, and all the others immediately fell away as we realized: This was the one. Watch in amazement as the Back to the Future trilogy is recast as a forbidden love affair between Marty McFly and Doc Brown. Time passes, and rewinds, and passes again, but nothing can tear them apart not even a whiny, jealous Mary Steenburgen. As is always the case with these things, the devil is in the details: Even though you know it's coming, we dare you not to laugh after the brief pause that finally brings the two movie's logos together.

The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke returns from a long vacation with her annual slash-and-burn Oscar predictions. Perhaps fearing an arson conviction if she actually torched the Kodak Theater, Finke settles for kicking George Clooney in the balls, accusing conservative Academy members of fearing that Brokeback Mountain will give them a boner, calling Paul Giamatti a troglodyte (actually a point in his favor, she says), and, perhaps most sensationally, questioning Heath Ledger's taste in women:

As long as we're on the subject of fan-created works inspired by pop-culture phenomena, it seems that not only has Brokeback Mountain spawned countless parodies, it's also moved some to pick up their brushes in artistic tribute. Several gay-cowboy-admiring virtuosos have offered their wares on eBay (individual auctions here, here, here, and here). Forunately for us all, a search for "paintings inspired by the film Munich" did not produce any results.

Unfailingly reliable British tabloid The Sun claims to have a handle on Brad Pitt's career strategy in the post-Brokeback Mountain world:

· We keep saying that we're not going to laugh at any more Brokeback parodies, and we're made liars again and again. Prepare yourselves for Broke Mac Mountain, geeks. [via Towleroad]
· A little time at the tattoo parlor might cut down on some paparazzi attacks, if you choose the right ink.
· This is easily the best blog post comparing Crash and a straight-to-video volleyball movie we've ever read.
· Oscar trivia: Did you know that George Clooney is the first person to ever be nominated as a director while being recognized for an acting role in a different film in the same year? Now you do!
· A Munich videogame ain't that bad of an idea.
· The Random Celebrity Gossip Generator coughed up a good one: Lindsay Lohan was hospitalized in Londan after cutting her leg at Bryan Adams' home.

USA Today and Variety have amassed the definitive surveys of today's Oscar nominee reactions, with most of the responses falling into one or more of the following categories: "I never expected it," "I feel like a kid again," "I will be celebrating with/without alcohol," "My [insert occupation here] called to tell me the news," "I'm thrilled my co-workers got one too," and, finally, its remorseful companion, "I'm disappointed my co-star was left out."

Welcome to the most important morning of the year, when Oscar emerges from his gilded awards-hole, announces who's naughty and nice, leaves some nominations under a nearby tree, and, finally sated from a milk-and-cookies breakfast and scared by his phallic shadow, retreats back into darkness, signalling that we're going to have five more weeks of overheated, hyperobsessive speculation about who will eventually take home some little statues. (It may appear we're a little mixed up, but a day this hallowed requires conflated mythologies.) Without further ado: