For the past three Decembers, the highlight of our Hollywood Holiday Card feature* has been watching management/production entity Benderspink's annual holiday card evolve from cut-rate Apprentice parody to disturbing, Giant Santa molestation fantasy to this year's surpassing achievement, a handsomely designed faux Us Weekly spread celebrating day-to-day life at the company, assistant-bludgeoning warts and all. Easily our favorite part of this mini-tour of the Benderspink offices is the They Develop Screenplays With Writers! panel, in which partner Chris Bender demonstrates the kind of mastery of three-act structure that will help shepherd upcoming prestige project Boob Job to incredible success.

Serial cooterbitionist Britney Spears may have recently rediscovered the confidence enhancing pleasures of the ladies' underpanty, but it seems as though she still hasn't quite gotten out of her system all the "on the town with friends"-going (even on her birthday, y'all!) she's sacrificed over the past couple years in the name of a higher, procreational calling. TMZ's camcorder-equipped centurions were on hand to capture yet another of her nocturnal adventures, a carefree evening of baby-free fun that turned dark when a bystander at The Standard "pulled the car door open and proceeded to jump around crazily." The stunning video is here, with the googley-eyed, lunatic leaper in aqua satinware making his terrifying appearance just before the midway mark. Like a crazed Muppet out of her darkest nightmares, Britney won't soon forget his shameless mugging for the paparazzi, nor those chilling, final words of "Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay!" before he got bored and wandered away, and she courageously managed to slam shut her SUV door.

We tried putting together a comprehensive Defamer Holiday Gift Guide for our readers, but then it hit us: a list of wonderful things you might buy for people you cherish and/or need favors from should begin and end with the fine garments on sale at the Gawker Shop. Is there a better way to express your love than in t-shirt form? Wait, this one is easy, so we'll answer it for you: No, there is not. And as a special enticement to make an already ludicrously easy gift-giving decision even more simple, the Shop is offering a special, pre-holiday 20.69% discount on our Defamer-themed Bathroom Stall VIP Club Member and Your Assistant Hates You models, with the latter style the perfect way to remind your boss of your warm feelings towards him during this festive season. Hit the shop and buy, buy, buy, for time is running out to have your purchases shipped before you abandon our fair city for the holidays.

Just hours after the Golden Globe nominations were announced, better entertainment news bureaus everywhere were on the phone with the lucky, chosen few, who shared their "where they were" moments (let's get a handle of things, folks—these are the Globes we're talking about) and their initial reactions (generally positive, save for double nominee Clint Eastwood, who felt the final installment of his WWII trilogy—a YouTube video of a hamster making its way through a video game prison camp—was sorely overlooked.) A round-up:
· Best "where were you" answer definitely goes to Babel director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who was stumbling in from a party at 5:30 a.m. to find his wife still awake, watching the results. Nice save, Gonzalez! You know you were toast without the nomination. [Variety]
· Sacha Baron Cohen delivers this statement: "I have been trying to let Borat know this great news but for the last 4 hours both of Kazakhstan's telephones have been engaged. Eventually, Premier Nazarbayev answered and said he would pass on the message as soon as Borat returned from Iran, where he is guest of honor at the Holocaust Denial Conference." [The Hot Blog]
· The WGA nominations were announced today, and HBO is the only TV network (not that it's TV) with two series in each of the major categories (Deadwood and Sopranos/Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage). NBC, meanwhile, picks up four of the five nominees for best new series, pitting 30 Rock against Studio 60 in a contest we can only assume was concocted purely for the guild members' amusement. [THR]

Fox orders eight episodes of the Mark Burnett game show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Unfortunately, the competition won't pit adults against school kids, just ask them questions from fifth grade textbooks. The children will, however, be on hand as lifelines and to remind their elders how stupid they've become in their dotage, a decreased mental capacity probably resulting from watching the network's brain-smoothing reality TV programming. [Variety]
Frequent Academy Award nominee (but zero-time winner) Ennio Morricone will receive an honorary Oscar for his legendary score-composing work, a recognition the Academy hopes will make up for decades of painful snubs. [THR]
Johnny Depp's shingle goes on an acquisition spree, buying up the film rights to three books and hiring writer D.V. DeVincentis to adapt Nick Hornby's lighthearted suicide novel, A Long Way Down. [Variety]
The Devil Wears Prada actress and Texas fright wig model Anne Hathaway enters the supernatural thriller part of her career, signing up to star in Passengers, the story of a grief counselor to whom freaky, Sarah Michelle Gellar-level shit inevitably happens. [THR]
Film production company Bauer Martinez celebrates the holidays by laying off 20 percent of its staff, citing the recent bombing of their Van Wilder sequel and Harsh Times as reasons for the Yuletide firings. Merry Christmas, new job hunters! [Variety]

It seems Factory Girl, the Edie Sedgwick biopic Harvey Weinstein promised us would establish Sienna Miller as a Major Actress, instead of just "that chick who's all pissed and shit about Jude Law banging his nanny," is well on its way to laying claim to the title of Hollywood's Doomed Production of 2006. As additional scenes are being shot, presumably to tighten the narrative while making it stink less than the trailer suggests it currently does, now comes news that Bob Dylan has unleashed his gang of scary lawyers on Girl producer Bob Yari—himself no stranger to the art of the threatening legal missive—over what they are claiming to be the film's thinly veiled characterization of the singer, played by Hayden Christensen:

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:

We hate to return so quickly to the Golden Globes nominations, but since we made a point of spotlighting Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip creator Aaron Sorkin's hope that a Globe nod would elevate his Little Serious-Minded Sketch Comedy Drama That Could from a "critical hit" into the type of hit that people actually watch, we thought it relevant to note that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association decided not to sprinkle its magic Nielsen dust on the series, granting a single nomination recognizing Sarah Paulson's performance as the proud Krazee Khristian who so glows with talent that her cast members can only gaze upon her through welding masks. We trust that Sorkin will handle this disappointment maturely, refraining from the petty impulse to have Matthew Perry and Brad Whitford hold forth at length about the meaninglessness of awards shows on a future episode, lambasting the "back-slapping, junket-whore buffet monkeys who wouldn't know quality programming if a DVD screener lodged itself next to the empty heads lodged in their asses" for abandoning his show in its hour of need.

With no Golden Globes story line as compelling as last year's tension over whether or not the Hollywood Foreign Press Association would pit Heath Ledger's mumble-mouthed rancher against Jake Gyllenhaal's dreamy-eyed-yet-mercurial cowpoke (or, more accurately, "sheep-poke") bottom, we suppose we'll have to settle for the one you're going to be reading about all day: the double nominations of Clint Eastwood in the directing category (for both of his World War II movies) and Leonardo DiCaprio's dual Best Actor nods for The Departed and Blood Diamond. For those so inclined, squeezing one's eyes shut and imagining the steamy Leo-on-Leo action of DiCaprio's Boston cop and South African smuggler wrestling over the gilded Globe statue while grunting in passable Southie and Afrikaner accents might fill the erotic void left by the celebrated gay cowboys. In other multiple nominations news, Helen Mirren was recognized for playing both Elizabeth I in a TV miniseries and Elizabeth II in The Queen, an achievement that we genuinely hope you won't use to concoct transgressive, cross-generational fantasies that sully the monarchy. Leave the queens alone, sicky.

· Our complaining about Fox's non-embeddable "Bigfoot jerking off a unicorn" clip from Talkshow got results! It's now nestled above, allowing you to rewatch this compelling scene of one mythical creature manually manipulating the genitals of another, right here in this post!
We've had our fill of Nicole Richie news today, but TMZ kept digging and turned up a previous DUI arrest.
Dan Marino never takes losing well, especially when it's to a Teleprompter.
· Citizens of Washington DC: Have you raped any babies? Better hope not, because Jenna Elfman is coming, and she'll pull that ugly secret right out of you.
· At the behest of Us Weekly, Camille Paglia overthinks Jennifer Aniston.

With all the bongo-beating build-up to tomorrow morning's announcement of the Golden Globe movie nominations, it's easy to forget that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's annual awards ceremony also celebrates excellence in the Dramatic Televised Arts. And where Emmy voters are seemingly bound by conservative voting practices (or just can't be bothered to watch the screeners in the first place), the HFPA members are free to reward on merit alone, often taking it upon themselves to champion groundbreaking programming in its nascency. THR looks at the chances for some of this TV season's boldest new voices, including Aaron Sorkin's drama about the serious-minded people who make sketch comedy, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip:

A week ago, when Star magazine intercepted and then published an e-mail in which a Texas sorority girl told her sisters of the magical, nonpenetrative Budapest night she spent snuggling with Newly Single Famous Person Vince Vaughn, we thought that ill-advised missive might be the last thing (OK, besides the blog that was taken down shortly thereafter) we ever read authored by the Gamma Chi Delta. Today, however, she returns with an essay decrying her recent infamy in Allentown's Morning Call Online, lamenting the nation's general level of unhealthy interest in tabloid trash as much as her misguided faith that some harmless sharing of her firsthand experience of a celebrity's estimable cuddling skills would never be forwarded outside of her circle of trust:

· Music round-up: Peaches at the Avalon; The Bangles, Wires on Fire, and Matthew Sweet at The Roxy; Mike Bloom at the Hotel Caf .
· It's an evening of cocktails, latkas, menorah lighting, social justice, music, and comedians at the 10th annual Vodka Latka: Festival of Rights at the El Rey, featuring Jill Soloway, Eric Schwartz, Craig Wright, Julie Hermelin, Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo.
· Watch The Beauty and the Beast Enchanted Christmas while ice skating at Pershing Square, an event not to be confused with the Hipsters On Ice Spectacular Spaceland hosts tomorrow night.

Shortly after we offered a tip of the Santa hat to last season's agency Grinch for improving upon the cheap, Santee-Alley-quality electronics it handed out in 2005 by upgrading to Apple gift cards, we received this report of the comparative lump of coal dropped in the stockings of CAA's wrong-coasted staffers:

Even after spending countless hours yesterday completely immersing ourselves in the virtual reality of local news outlet KABC 7's RichieTracker7000 , we were unable to fully inhabit Nicole Richie's consciousness and formulate a plausible excuse for why she ingested Vicodin and marijuana before embarking on her wrong-way trip on the 134, coming back again and again only to our own reasons for mixing prescription narcotics with recreational drugs: to temporarily blunt the pain of our sad existence. Us Weekly now releases us from the torment of trying to put aside our own problems long enough to puzzle through why Richie popped that fateful pill, reporting that "she's telling friends" (who, we're sure, have no connection to either her publicity or legal teams) that she "occasionally" Vikes up because of menstrual cramps. And in a truly helpful bit of unnamed pal-chatter, the Us source further claims that Richie is upset at the police department's underreporting of her weight by ten pounds; replacing the lost body mass she's "proud" to have supposedly gained over the last two months bumps her up to a meatier, seemingly eating-disorder-free 95 lbs, a level at which she can probably sustain the cramp-inducing menstrual functions she treats with that Vicodin. Well played, anonymous friends who demonstrate enviable PR savvy!

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are now posted several times a week—so send them in before attending to other basic human needs. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the time you saw Andy Dick fight a losing battle with the call of nature in the Beverly Center 8th floor men's room.

Determining that the $1.6 million in fines that his company was ordered to pay for not keeping accurate records on the ages of drunken 17-year-olds they may have accidentally filmed in the act of baring their breasts after funneling pints of Goldschlager on Spring Break would hardly put a dent in Girls Gone Wild jailbait-titty-flash mogul Joe Francis's private jet catering budget, much less make him pause for reflection about preying on drunken co-eds, a Florida judge tacked on some community service for Francis and his cohorts, then publicly chided them for the cowardice built in to their business model:

· The mavericks of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle give their top honors—picture and directing—to Todd Fields' Little Children. Helen Mirren wins best actress for The Queen, a status quo concession they make up for by awarding Sacha Baron Cohen best actor for his Pamela Anderson-stalking work in Borat. Screenplay honors go to the hardboiled, Raymond-Chandler-meets-Degrassi indie, Brick. [SFFCC.org]
· Time's Richard Corliss gives us yet more insight into the shadowy goings on behind the closed doors of the New York Film Circle's annual gang bang ("The job is simple: tear yellow-lined paper into cracker-size bits; write a name or three on one piece; wait while the names are read out and tabulated," he writes, grippingly), and does some actual math to figure out if these lists actually predict Oscar results. Answer: Yes, they do! Occasionally. [Time.com]
· Clint vs. Clint. Leo vs. Leo. Peter vs. Peter. (Morgan: he wrote The Queen and Last King of Scotland.) In a bounty year of award-worthy output, will ceremonies like the Golden Globes (nominations out this Thursday) see multiple nods for single artists who did double-duty, or will vote-splitting end up cancelling them out? [LAT]
· Letters From Iwo Jima and United 93's strong showing in critics' polls puts the underhyped downer movies high on Academy members' radars; Ellen DeGeneres and her writers are already salivating at the hilarious opening montage sequence in which she single-handedly foils the plans of a group of 9-11 terrorists, only to jet-pack to the ground and find herself trapped in a Japanese internment camp. [Reuters]

Julia Roberts will produce and possibly star in an adaptation of the Lolly Winston novel Happiness Sold Separately, about a suburban wife whose husband, forgetting that he's married to Julia Roberts (perhaps things will be complicated by the character's mousy hairstyle, clunky glasses, and dowdy wardrobe), starts banging the nutritionist at his gym. [Variety]
· Comedy Central signs away another part of its soul to the blue-collared comedy devil, ordering a half-hour animated pilot about Larry the Cable Guy's wacky misadventures as the co-owner of a cable TV station. [THR]
· Meanwhile, Nickelodeon tries to counteract corporate sibling Comedy Central's development evil by greenlighting a new animated series starring SNL's Amy Poehler, Mighty B, about an adorably psychotic 10-year-old Honeybee scout. [THR]
Producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Jason Blum buy the film rights to an upcoming Vanity Fair article about the CIA, The Shop; no word on if VF editor Graydon Carter will earn a producing fee for once musing to himself while staring out his office window that the story would make a great movie. [Variety]
Dan Mazer, longtime Sacha Baron Cohen partner-in-crime, is officially inducted into Hollywood's Comedy Mafia by making a deal to write and direct a Judd Apatow-produced, "broad, out-there" comedy for Universal. Bonus soundbite: Mazer marvels that Cohen's dangling of "his testicles in another man's face" has not disqualified him from Oscar consideration. [Variety]

Armed with nothing more than a well-worn pair of Stevens Stompers, a scrappy team of background dancers, and a crazy dream that her romantic comedy set against the backdrop of competitive clogging might one day find its way onto the big screen, writer/actress Julia Fowler took to the roof of a local parking structure, where she would perform perhaps the first clog-pitch in Hollywood history. THR reminds us once again about why we love this town so much: