Just in case your assistant has forgotten to pencil it into your calendar, tonight is the $2,300 per person fundraiser/pre-coronation ceremony for Barack Obama that begins at the Beverly Hilton and ends at David Geffen's Malibu compound (the parade from the hotel to the beach, during which kingmaking DreamWorks billionaires Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Steven Spielberg will take turns carrying the senator on their shoulders, is expected to be spectacular), where Hollywood's hottest presidential hopeful will officially receive his much-anticipated reacharound from industry players who were able to scare up 20 well-monied Friends of Barry for the event. In an effort to keep out undesirables, only those who've ponied up their tribute will be allowed to join in the festivities. Reports the NY Times:

It's been a day full of big wins for the billionaires of DreamWorks SKG. Earlier, we pointed out that the California Coastal Commission granted David Geffen a much-needed ten-foot buffer between his Malibu Gay Mafia stronghold and the sun-worshipping Untouchables who dare to splay their unsightly forms upon his beloved, but distressingly public, stretch of Carbon Beach. Now word comes that bite-sized mogul and two-time intramural DreamWorks Animation wet t-shirt champion Jeffrey Katzenberg has tasted $2.17 million worth of bittersweet victory in a lawsuit against the rubber-pushing villains of Goodyear, whose faulty, leaking heating hoses did grievous damage to his Park City-adjacent vacation home:

Huzzah! The 24-year-long power struggle between Carbon Beach-hogging Malibu megamogul David Geffen and the unwashed masses dedicated to ensuring easy public access to the stretch of luxurious sand behind his compound is finally over! As you can clearly see from the helpful LAT graphic (floating head our value-add) illustrating the settlement reached yesterday between Geffen, the California Coastal Commission, and the public advocacy group People Against Billionaire Beach Hijackers, the DreamWorks partner agreed to open a 42-foot section of the sand he's previously closed off in exchange for being granted a ten-foot plebe-buffer that should help reduce the noisome odor of off-brand cocoa butter that often wafts from the baking flesh of commoners and onto to Geffen's deck, ruining many an oceanside meal. According to the Times, Geffen's attorney is heralding the detente as a "new era of understanding," one in which his client's formerly trigger-happy snipers will first fire a warning shot before gunning down tourists who wander uncomfortably close to their master's property line.

It's a question threatening to tear Hollywood's most prominent, liberal-kingmaking billionaires apart at the gilded seams: Do they throw a fabulous fund-raiser aimed at continuing the spread Obamamania, the sensation sweeping the industry, or do they fall back into the calming, emasculating embrace of longtime Democratic stalwart Hillary Clinton, a tragically unsexy, but arguably safer, choice? The answer, of course, is, "Why can't we do both? We have so much fucking money that no one can tell us to make up our minds until we're good and ready," but Slate notes that a recent Robert Novak column seemed to imply that the officially unbetrothed Steven Spielberg's hosting of a Clinton event means that he's already decided to abandon DreamWorks partners David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg's desire to call forth from the heavens a deluge of showbiz cash that will carry their beloved Obama to an easy nomination:

Just in case you haven't yet had your fill of stories about the backbiting between Paramount emperor Brad Grey and the sneaky studio usurpers crouching not-so-quietly inside the DreamWorks Trojan Horse he bought a year ago, the LA Weekly's Nikki Finke reports that skeletal Viacom executive presence Sumner Redstone may have signed Grey's death certificate by letting slip at a cozy power-player dinner party a rather impolitic comment about why Dreamgirls found itself without a Best Picture nomination. Clasping your hand to your mouth while trying to suppress an outraged "Oh. No. He. Did. Int!" is completely optional as you read on:

• CNBC is backing Maria Bartiromo because, really, what else do you know about CNBC apart from Maria Bartiromo? [NYT]
  

While presidential hopeful Barack Obama seems to have all but locked up the endorsement of DreamWorks' Hollywood kingmaking troika with the announcement of an upcoming fundraiser aimed at perpetuating the spread of Obamamania through the entertainment industry community, Hillary "The Experienced Alternative" Clinton is far from conceding the town to her adversary, setting up her own local opportunity to circle a luxury hotel ballroom, tossing show business blood money in a burlap sack as wealthy diners consume their dinner. Reports Var on the rapidly approaching orgies of political starfuckery:

Perhaps souring on Hillary Clinton's further political ambitions because she seems "not president-y enough" among Hollywood types trying to imagine casting her in the role of the nation's highest office, the industry is surging behind Entertainment Weekly's 2006 Must Guy To Have Sitting Next To You On A Panel About Something Important, Like That Darfur Deal, Illinois senator Barack Obama. Yesterday's NY Daily News reported that Endeavor's Ari "My Brother Rahm Totally Parties With Barack!" Emanuel will be throwing an event for Obama in February, while the LAT's Cause Celebre column today notes that he may have already sown up the industry-kingmaking Gay Mafia vote of Velvet Potentate David Geffen:

• The DEA—yes, that DEA—has a top-10 list of their very own this year. [Complex]
  

Today's LAT reports that DreamWorks mogul and flawed Gay Mafia knight David Geffen has made a $2 billion cash offer for the paper, a bid that's been languishing for a month while its parent Tribune Company waits to see if an individual or corporation richer than even Geffen will step up and buy the entire company:

Entertainment mogul David Geffen, a longtime suitor, has made a $2 billion cash offer for the Los Angeles Times. This complicates not only owner Tribune Co.'s attempt to sell itself as a whole (rather than individual papers or assets), but also the hopes of fired LAT editor Dean Baquet for an eventual return. No formal offers for Tribune Co. have materialized, despite vague interest from various parties, including billionaire duo Eli Broad and Ron Burkle. Baquet supposedly wants to meet with Broad and Burkle to pitch himself as a valuable addition to their hypothetical team, even as speculation grows that he'll take a job at The New York Times rather than wait around much longer. Castle drama alert: Will Baquet scheme with NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to defenestrate current NYT editor Bill Keller? (Check that dry mention of Keller's retirement age.) But assuming no formal offer gets made for the whole enchilada, Tribune Co. probably can't afford to leave Geffen's gay mafia money lying on the table for long.

At last night's panel discussion/entertainment journalist deathmatch featuring the LAT's Jon Horn and Patrick Goldstein and the NY Times' Sharon Waxman and Laura Holson, talk inevitably turned to DreamWorks mogul/Gay Mafia potentate/Malibu beach baron David Geffen's efforts to acquire the west-coasted Times, prompting a debate between the two camps about whether LAT staffers should embrace or fear their potential Hollywood master. LA Observed recaps:

• Ron Burkle, Eli Broad, David Geffen, Gannett, that old dude from the insurance company: Seems like everyone wants a piece of Tribune. Eat the Press directs you to all the further reading you might possibly want to do in the subject, which, if you're like us, isn't a whole hell of a lot. But, you know, de gustibus and all that. [ETP]
  

• Morgan Stanley continues to slap Sulzberger around. [NYP]
  

Following up on a report in yesterday's Times about the sale by David Geffen of Jackson Pollock's "No. 5, 1948," to a mysterious Mexican, the Guardian says, hey, wait a second:

For far too long, the government looked the other way as Malibu's most celebrated citizens squatted upon their 24-carat gilded commodes and flushed away their perfect, odorless bowel movements into potentially environmentally unsafe septic tanks, the toxic runoff from which may be tainting the glorious, placid ocean their beachside compounds overlook. Now, however, this unacceptably laissez faire attitude towards celebrity excretions is coming to an end, as environmental regulators will try and determine the source of local ocean pollution:

• NYP's Tim Arango becomes only reporter in last month not snapped up by Portfolio; he's going to Fortune. [NYO]
• NewsCorp buys up a bunch of metropolitan-area newspapers. Expect them to be rebranded as Queenist and Only the Paper Knows Brooklyn any day now. [NYT]
• If David Geffen buys the LAT will the paper be able to cover his friends fairly? Speaking as the employees of a gay media magnate ourselves, we're gonna say no. [DHD]

Geffen, DIC ready to get Party started [Variety]

Nestled deeply in the "Surveillance" section of today's Rush & Molloy column in the NY Daily News comes this item regarding Seann William Scott, star of such upcoming entertainments as Coxblocker and Mr. Woodcock, tripping the gay light fantastic with none other than Carbon Beach land baron, David Geffen:

The Post reports today that velvet mafioso David Geffen has dropped a wee $10 million on a condo at 158 Mercer Street (he also has a residence at 810 Fifth and an estate in Malibu, for which he fights relentlessly to keep commoners off of "his" beach). The Observer, however, notes that Geffen himself will not be living in the Mercer Street loft; he is one of three trustees listed on the deed-transfer record. The lucky new denizen of Soho is Saturday Night Live producer and fashion progeny Marci Klein, which the Post reported in April — though today, oddly, the paper makes no mention of Klein being the actual resident.