—Madonna's opinions about Iraq count more than yours because she's famous and knows 72 names for God. Also, her manager quit.
—Kate Bosworth and Kirsten Dunst indulge in some subtly ironic smoking at a cancer benefit.
—Obvious for anyone whose name ends in "ilton": "The couple may not have been entirely sober when they swapped vows at 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 15 at Vegas Wedding Chapel."
—Two Minutes with Taylor Negron, Better Off Dead's creepy mailman.
—Maybe there was something to David Gest's headaches...

1. David O. Russell and Lily Tomlin shoot the shit about I Heart Huckabees at the Hammer Conversations series at UCLA. They're sure to discuss Russell's now-legendary directing techniques, and somewhat less likely to talk about his putting Christopher Nolan in a headlock or his infamous brawl with George Clooney. Bonus points for anyone asking him about proper armpit licking technique should there be a Q and A session.
2. Rising indie darlings Dogs Die in Hot Cars rock in a hot club at the Troubadour.
3. Sean Penn finally opts for some refreshingly light, apolitical fare, starring in The Assassination of Richard Nixon at an AFI Fest showing at the ArcLight. OK, maybe not so light, but it's probably less political than another trip to Iraq.

This just in! Celebrities are still (not) eating at Soho's nouveau institution, Balthazar, and multiplying within its venerable walls:

—Natalie Portman is caught smoking in Israel, also caught "happy" that Bush won the election. Oh, yeah, she campaigned for Kerry. Um, flip flop?
—It's always sad when fathers and daughters attend separate press junkets in the same hotel, yet still can't find a way to mend the rifts between them.
—Tara Reid extends her Week of Being Paris Hilton by being caught partying her ass off immediately after swearing she's given up partying. What's the saying? You can't expect a retard to change its spots? Close enough.
—The Funkyjenn Gazette wonders what the Producers Guild thinks of bogus "lifestyle producers" diluting the power of their credits.
—Who said Nicky Hilton's fake marriage wouldn't last? August 15th to November 8th is a pretty good run for faux nuptials.

Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are sent in by our readers. Send yours to tips@defamer.com and let Halle Berry know you saw her toss that cigarette butt out of her SUV's window.

—Jim Belushi sues Catwoman for $4 million for a "campaign of harassment designed to drive him from his home." What's he going to do when the Joker moves in on the other side and he's completely outflanked by Batman villains?
—When we predicted that Paris Hilton would retaliate for Tara Reid's boob slip with a full-on beaver unveiling, we never dreamed Hilton would get around to it on the same night.
—"Hagman has stipulated that upon his death, he wants his body to be ground in a wood chipper and scattered in a field, where wheat is to be harvested for a cake to be eaten by his friends and family one year later."
—"Which tweeny-bopper matinee idol has been bopping more than just her Hollywood husband? Seems this small but mighty starlet is fulfilling computer nerd fantasies everywhere by laying members of the femme persuasion." The You Can't Make It Up blog gets in the on the blind-item fun.
—Coffee shop turf wars such as these never end well. Feelings are hurt, wounds reopened, and baristas are forced to choose sides. And we beg of you, please, no gunplay.

1. We imagine that Arianna Huffington's got some smack to talk about the election, and she'll get the chance to vent at the Westside Today Speaker Series at the Luxe Hotel on Sunset.
2. Free music rundown: Detroit DJ Jimmy Edgar does his thing for free at Monroe’s and Spaceland's got new bands from parts of old favorites, with Telephone (Dandy Warhols) and The High Sierras (Beachwood Sparks) playing without the bothersome cover charge.
3. Goings on at AFI Fest at the ArcLight: A Tribute to Pedro Almodovar, the man who made pregnant nuns cool again; The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, based on the J.T. LeRoy book we never got around to reading, but hey, Winona Ryder; Let’s Rock Again: a documentary about the Clash's immortal Joe Strummer as he tours with the Mescaleros.

After spending a weekend full of failed attempts to make sweet, sweet love to Diebold executives (predictably, it didn't work), I'm back in the big leftist city. Nothing but my appreciation goes to guest editor Matt Haber, who did a remarkable job scaring the shit out of us with some "rare" close-ups of Tara Reid's deformed nipplage. Thanks for the nightmares, Matt!

Well, that's it for me. Jessica will be back from her Republican hoedown on Monday, no doubt with hilarious stories of Karl Rove's pick up lines ("I faked 100,000 votes in Ohio, but you won't fake it tonight, sweet pea"). Hopefully she'll wash off the reptilian Rove ooze before she comes in to work.

Friday
1. David Foster Wallace reads as part of the UCLA Hammer's “Some Favorite Writers” series. It will be a little like hanging out with a rockstar, albeit one who writes page-long sentences and has a footnote fetish.
2. Pre-ATP Music round-up: U.N.K.L.E. at The Pearl in West Hollywood; Death Cab for Cutie at the Wiltern (good luck one night after The O.C. premiere!); Ted Leo & The Pharmacists at the El Rey.
Saturday:
3. All Tomorrow’s Parties begins with Modest Mouse as this year's curator. (For the indie-impaired, that means they picked the bands that are performing.) Too bad they didn’t have a say in the location, since waiting on a two-hour line to cram into the Queen Mary has a really unfortunate sobering effect. The easy solution: Drink more.
4. Attend an Evening at the Playboy Mansion to benefit the Special Olympics. Sure, it's a good cause, but shouldn't a trip to the Mansion have no redeeming value other than telling your friends you got slapped by five Bunnies in the Grotto?
Sunday:
5. All Tomorrow’s Parties continues. Still in Long Beach. And hopefully, still grievously drunk from Saturday's festivities.
6. Pink's Turns 65! 65 cent hot dogs! The line's going to run from La Brea and Melrose up into Studio City!
7. Boing Boing's blogging femme-fatale Xeni Jardin and others read irreverent shorts (that Xeni swears like a drunken pirate!) at Vermin on the Mount at the Mountain in Chinatown.

We now momentarily pause to thank this week's sponsors, whose support nicely supplements the part-time income we earn de-bradding scripts in the CAA mailroom. If you're interested in hopping on the advertising bandwagon, see this,

We're endlessly fascinated by reports of the A-list exhausting all of their channels of influence and actually reporting for jury duty. A judge told Harrison Ford he "took it like a man" by bothering to show up at a Santa Monica court; Kelsey Grammer might just get a judicial reacharound for appearing in the 213.

When Matt Haber awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous gawkeroach...

—Notorious prankster George Clooney retaliated against a Brad Pitt joke on the set of Ocean's Twelve by putting a bumper sticker reading "Small Penis Onboard" on Pitt's car. Oooh, burn! If he really wanted to hurt him, Clooney could've gone with "Honk if you think taking my shirt off and caressing my abs passes for acting."
—"12:12p. Back to the shoot. I miss Sebastian already. He's lost in a crowd of dancers while I stand on a fake mountaintop waving a flag that has my face on it. Pyrotechnics and fake snow. This video stinks, but thinking of his warm smile gets me through it." A Day In The Love Life Of An A-List Celebrity
—TVGasm presents their "fair and balanced," nearly minute-by-minute coverage of Tuesday night's election coverage. Who had time to blog in between smashing their head into a wall and self-medicating with vodka shots?
—And in case you didn't have enough Ocean's Twelve news in the preceeding five inches of screen, the always-reliable WENN reports that Julia Roberts is blind with rage that Catherine Zeta-Jones received higher billing for the movie, thus indicating that CZJ is a bigger star. What's Roberts got to do to get some respect in this town, get knocked up with quadruplets and give birth on the set?

1, Basketball 101 with the L.A. Lakers is an officially-sanctioned NBA event teaching participants the game's fundamentals, like how to shoot free throws, execute a pick and roll, or use the buddy system when visiting a player's hotel room. Insert your own joke about "court strategies" here. (Tonight at Staples Center.)
2. AFI's aptly-named AFI Fest 2004 film festival opens tonight with Kevin Spacey's Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea at the ArcLight—which we haven't yet seen but assume contains more than just this still image of Spacey suggestively posing with a microphone. But even this one picture's got Oscar nom written all over it!
3. Tonight quickie concert round-up: A little bit country: Kasey Chambers at the El Rey; A little bit rock n' roll: The Fever and VHS/Beta at the Echo; A little bit Ted Leo spinning some tunes among manicures and hairdryers: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists DJ at Beauty Bar.
4. As if you didn't already know from the endless promotion (Gail Berman, please PayPal five thousand dollars to tips@defamer.com), Seth Cohen will finally return to the little box in your living room, at least for tonight. Tomorrow, you can go back to seeing him at your favorite music venue or the guest bathroom in your home.

The past few days have really made me think (that is, when they haven't made me drink) and, I've realized, New York is just too damn liberal. How can I be expected to function in a state that can't even vote for the right President? I need to get the hell out of here and head someplace safe, where I needn't be exposed to the threat of homosexuals expressing their undying, lubed-up love. That's right: I'm going to Texas tonight for a three-day weekend of presidential reverie. I'm even bringing my LES-issued cowboy boots to help me fit in on the Bush ranch.

As the NY Daily News' Lloyd Grove clumsily leaked this morning (in that lovable, misspelling-riddled, afterthought-ish way of his), Esquire magazine is revealing the secret of my incredibly mundane identity in its upcoming issue, after months of relatively pointless anonymity. And:

So you think that a supporting player from Twin Peaks turning out at the polls was a Lynchian experience? You don't know Lynchian until you've seen him getting out to vote in the Valley:

· The man walks the talk....Sean Combs voted this a.m. at the polling place on East 75th between 2nd and 3rd. Surrounded by cameras and sercurity people, he left the little old ladies on the UES spinning trying to figure out who he is.

Reports from our city's polling places are still trickling in. This time a bite-sized actor from a prominent Scientologist family is caught exercising his right to vote.