Clay is the hottest new beauty product for celebrities. Forget other forms of soil. Only clay has today's most popular mix of dirt, water, and trace minerals. Do not be caught consorting with silt, mud, or quicksand—clay is this season's soil of choice.

Working from a tip given by an aging mobster, the FBI began digging in a overgrown field in Detroit in search for the missing body of former Teamster boss, Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa's remains have been missing for nearly four decades.

Science now says if you get a wound, you should rub dirt in it. Or, I guess, go to a hospital.

HPV boys! Chest X-rays! Aging secrets! Bat disease! Old pacemakers! Filthy surface! Coffee protection! Super broccoli! And gurl U no U better keep taking that birth control! It's your Wednesday Health Watch, where we watch your health—in technicolor!

This is fun: Greenpeace is suing Dow Chemical and two of its PR firms, claiming that they hired private investigators "who stole documents, tapped phones and hacked into computer networks between 1998 and 2000." They have lots of documents!

Email fitness! Dirt babies! Hamburger guilt! Asthma fat! Calorie cuts! Happy longevity! It's your Health Watch, where we watch your health—while eating 100-calorie Twinkies, which are good, but small!

Eating dirt. Eating at the world's best restaurant. Eating, as a weapon of international cold war. What do all these things have in common? Science! And eating. And death!

So, former MSNBC guy Dan Abrams is starting a "consulting" firm full of random media people to give advice to rich corporate clients about how to handle media-related issues. Do you know what that's called? It's called a PR firm. But this PR firm would never call itself that, because that would make the media people it employs sound corrupt. The thing is, this firm's business plan is so annoying that the rest of the media (us) is going to cover its clients even harder to make up for it. For example! Abrams' first client is billionaire Ron Perelman. Now why would Ron Perelman need to worry about his reputation?

Gossip Girl, the show that the media can't stop gushing over despite the fact that nobody actually watches it or anything, has of course been renewed for a second season. And in an apparent attempt to lure the large audience of celeb voyeurs that's currently interested in the cast members' bi-curious antics off-screen than on, the sultry young things-obsessed marketing crew at the CW has released some "inappropriate" images from the second season’s ad campaign. Thanks to Miley Cyrus and her “scandalous” series of endless flesh-baring spreads, any photos featuring tweenyboppers practically banging each other or doing their best O-face are fine by us. But releasing racy promos like these is a practice long used by GG’s predecessors, and the sleazy plan relying on that old promise that Sex Sells has a history of backfiring in many a series’ pretty little sweat-drenched faces:First, a closer look at the "sexy" ads in question, which include pull-quotes suggesting just how much closer potential viewers will get to the cool kids' table. Watching this show is so dangerous! Your parents will have nightmares just thinking about the (sort of) short skirts Blair wears! Do the nasty!

We don’t know about you, but the most surprising thing about hearing Courteney Cox’s FX show Dirt is being canceled was learning that it was still on the air. Sure, we recall the industry anticipation about yet another Friend comeback, the mildly intriguing pilot in which a cokehead actress overdoses in a bathtub, and then there was all that hullabaloo about the big lesbian makeout scene between Cox and Jennifer Aniston. But after getting all excited and finally watching the lukewarm peck, we gave up on the patchy attempt at nailing the current clusterfuck that is tabloid journalism these days. But as Cox told TV Guide at a benefit last night, the gig is up for good. The good news? Courteney and second fiddle husband David Arquette are planning to “all kinds of stuff” with their jointly run and oddly named production company, Coquette. Just as soon as David unlocks the bathroom door in which he’s been violently weeping all weekend. [TV Guide]

· Anxious that the Oscars are approaching and he still has no real idea of whether or the WGA—obviously a little preoccupied with their own issues—intends to grant a waiver for their awards ceremony, Academy president Sid Ganis begs the Guild for answers so that complicated logistical issues can be resolved. "We're running out time! [desperate punctuation ours]," wails Ganis, pleading for the sweet release of either a simple "yes" or "no." [Variety]
· Following his reported Monday dismissal from CAA for allegedly getting caught with his hand too far into Oprah's network cookie jar, reality TV agent Michael Camacho lands at UTA after "competitive and aggressive courting" by other agencies who believe that the controversy just proves he's an impish go-getter who might have gotten a little carried away during that recent Death Star misadventure. [THR]

Once again proving that she has absolutely no flair for the kind of sensationalist buzz-building that might generate some interest in her returning FX series Dirt, Courteney Cox Arquette misses a great opportunity to hint—however untruthfully—that Jennifer Aniston will return in the show's second season to alleviate the viewer blueballs induced by the disappointing kiss the two former Friends shared, finally consummating the hot, Monica-on-Rachel action we still so desperately crave. (But Tom Arnold will be making an appearance. Get excited!) On the other hand, she still won't close the door on a possible Friends reunion, so maybe that inevitable project (hey, Matt LeBlanc's gotta eat) will eventually provide a better opportunity for the fulfillment of this lingering fantasy. [Us]

After weathering a flatly written exchange in which Aniston's lesbian character tells Cox, "This is no way to live! You don't deserve to be alone," (oh, the bitter irony), then some innuendo about past dalliances between the characters (four implied times!), and one brushed off ass-grab (easy there, lesbian tiger), we finally get the kiss: A closed mouth cutaway unlikely to moisten the panties of even the show's most incontinent viewers. Have a look, trying not to sigh too loudly over this squandered opportunity to exploit ten seasons' worth of crackling, Sapphic sexual tension.

While Courteney Cox has previously warned hot-lesbian-action-obsessed gawkers (does the L Word not satisfy all their masturbation needs?) with no genuine interest in her series that her much-anticipated kiss with longtime Friend Jennifer Aniston will not be particularly hot, lesbian, or action-packed, we nonetheless have clung to the irrational hope that the prudish Cox was intentionally misrepresenting the moment, and that a dedicated Aniston managed to power a tongue through her co-star's tight-lipped defenses in the name of artistic truth. After today's NY Times review of the Dirt season finale, we think we're finally able to let this one go:

Demonstrating that she fundamentally misunderstands the entire purpose of stunt-casting her former Friends castmate in a role that requires some light lesbianism, Courteney Cox did her best to desensationalize the kiss she and Jennifer Aniston share on the season finale of Dirt, dumping a bucket of ice water into the laps of millions of tumescent potential viewers hoping to finally see their cherished fantasies of a little Monica-on-Rachel action realized on TV:

A couple of weeks ago at the TCA cable press tour, FX president John Landegraf played it a little coy when he hinted that things on new offering Dirt would get better about five episodes into the season, but didn't indicate exactly what form the coming improvement would take. According to TV Guide.com, viewers who stick with the show a little longer will be treated to the kind of stunt-lesbianism usually reserved for more established series in need of a ratings boost:

· The Soup proposes yet another way that FX can introduce a little more lightheartedness into dreary tabloid drama Dirt.
· Paula Abdul's flack blames her slurry, wildly gesticulating morning show performance on a cocktail of exhaustion and technical difficulties.
· Soon-to-be L.A. resident David Beckham consulted BFF Tom Cruise before agreeing to take $250 million from our local soccer club; once Cruise assured his pal that he'd still have plenty of money left over after he paid Los Angeles' mandatory 30-percent Celebrity Centre tax, Beckham was ready to sign his contract and start making his moving plans.
· Survivor is making further strides in diversifying its cast, choosing only 10 Californians for its upcoming Fiji Islands installment, as compared to the 13 they signed up for the Race Wars season.
· L.A. finally gets its own mystery stench a few days after New York's goes out of style. Typical.
· Our gloryhole-inspecting siblings over at Fleshbot have spent the week porning it up at the AVN Expo in Vegas.

TV Week's Critical Eye blog once again descends into the junketastic hell that is the Television Critics Association press tour, where boob-tube stars and programming executives submit themselves to panel discussion firing-squads in between parties where they're forced to mingle with their critical executioners. The Eye called yesterday's Dirt panel one of the "most anticipated" of the week, as bloodthirsty critics would finally have a chance to confront the people responsible for a show they've taking great glee in savaging, and recounts FX President John Landegraf's (shocking!) admission that he'll take ratings over praise, as well as his hopes that audiences will hang around long enough to see the series get better:

A Defamer operative who got his hands on a preview screener of FX's upcoming Dirt, Courtney Cox's attempt to launch an edgy, post-Friends TV career on basic cable by playing precisely the type of tabloid editor who torments her and her camera-shy family on a daily basis, submitted this brief review of the series's first two episodes. [Mild spoilers ahead, we suppose] As expected, there's FX's requisite naughtiness in the form of some semi-nudity and light swearing; somewhat less expected: Cox's repeated use of a vibrator and ex-Laker Rick Fox being bent over a hot tub and sodomized by a strap-on. Says our tipster:

THR's Ray Richmond reports that the website of TV writer/producer Matthew Carnahan was hijacked by hapless "Middle Eastern extremists," who replaced Carnahan's homepage (still down the last time we checked in) with these rather unpleasant images of death and strife from the region and the message, "If You Stop War We Will Be(sic) Stop Hacking." But while the man who will soon broker on-set peace between real-life couple David Arquette and Courteney Cox-Arquette on FX's upcoming Dirt undoubtedly has valuable insights into the crisis in the Middle East, Richmond points out that the hackers probably meant to target Matthew Michael Carnahan, the next entry down on the IMDb search page, the writer of terrorism drama The Kingdom. Then again, this could all just be a ploy by edgy publicists at FX to stir up some viral buzz for their series, "The outrageous celebrity tabloid workplace comedy the terrorists don't want you to see."