A tipster just told us that a bomb threat has cleared out E!'s Wilshire Boulvevard headquarters, a report we've been unable to confirm with anyone on the inside as we suspect they're all currently gathered outside of the building, fretting about the Simple Life footage of Nicole Richie relearning how to eat from fat-campers going unedited as they idle on the sidewalk. Have a clear view of E! HQ from your office? Sitting in your E! cube, scoffing at the inaccuracy of this post? Drop us a line. Details/corrections/developments as they become available...

Ask anyone in L.A. if they have ever seen the House of Davids, and you're likely to be greeted with an enthusiastic round of nodding heads and disgusted faces familiar with the infamous Hancock Park residence one might describe as an architectural interpretation of the top tier of Siegfried and Roy's fantasy wedding cake. But not much is known about the house's owner—until now, that is, as Losanjealous notes the following cast bio on the site for a new E! reality show already guilty of flagrant false-zip-code-advertising, High Maintenance 90210:

With roughly five-hundred celebrity-programming-focused basic cable networks vying for coverage of the same dozen or so people on a daily basis, it's to be expected that the crushing pressure to land exclusive video footage of a famous person's house in the salacious act of resting on its foundation might occasionally drive an overzealous camera crew to flirt with illegality. Entertainment journalism watchdog TMZ.com, whose clean, groundbreaking "fart in a mitten" confrontation of Paris Hilton is still the standard by which all celebrity ambushes are judged, reports that an E! crew was caught in the act of trespassing on Brad Pitt's property last Thursday:

Dallas fans who couldn't wait to see John Travolta attempt to cram 20 gallons of bloated cranium into J.R. Ewing's 10-gallon hat are in for a crushing disappointment, as New Regency's movie adaptation has been shelved until the studio can figure out what the hell to do now that every member of the cast but Travolta (even J.Lo!) realized it's going to be a fiasco and went running for the hills. [Variety]
· Roger Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times review for The Queen is his first published since he checked into the hospital for salivary cancer treatment back in June. He hopes to return to his TV show at the beginning of the year, where he will retake his rightful place demonstrating what a pinhead Richard Roeper is on a weekly basis. [THR]
China suspends the premieres of Miami Vice, World Trade Center, and, potentially, Casino Royale to clear room for the propaganda films scheduled for—and we're not making this up—"October Golden Autumn Excellent Domestic Film Exhibition Month." [Variety]
Ted Harbert, president of E! Networks, has been promoted to president and CEO of Comcast Entertainment Group, which will add overseeing G4 to his responsibilities. We are as exactly as excited as you are about this thrilling announcement concerning the corporate streamlining of basic cable network operations. [THR]
Weinstein-owned Genius Products picks up the North American rights to Dirty Sanchez: The Movie—the Welsh version of Jackass, not the sex tape featuring Screech's last ditch attempt to salvage something of career by painting a scatstache on some poor escort's upper lip. [Variety]

Dependable E! gossip-geyser Ted Casablanca—whose many closet-case and cokehead-centric blind items have provided Defamer readers with the foundation for countless hours of Guessing Game fun—has found himself embroiled in an ongoing controversy at his host network, which he dubs "CasablancaGate" in an unabashed airing of dirty-laundry in today's Awful Truth column. After posting several e-mails demanding some explanation as to his recent absence from E! News broadcasts, Ted offers this sketchily detailed response:

E! president Ted Harbert is a simple guy with simple desires: He merely wants peace between Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton so that they can actually appear on-screen together on their show without the intervention of editors, wants a buzzy scripted show for his hit-desolate schedule, and, most important of all, just wants his octogenarian mom to get on board with his vision for the network. Blogs TV Week from the TCAs, where TV executives pretend to tolerate the existence of the swarming media assigned to record their every word:

In what is easily the greatest act of airborne heroism by a basic cable reality television star since the really swishy one from Queer Eye sassed up a Southwest flight attendant's totally frumpy uniform by encouraging him to half-untuck the front of his shirt, Dr. 90210 star Dr. Robert Rey utilized the martial arts skills he so ably displays each week on his E! titty-makeover show to subdue an 80-year-old passenger in the midst of a cockpit-charging freak-out on an American Airlines flight late Monday. We shit you not:

We're sure it's just a coincidence that we came across two notices for potential E! shows on today's Craigslist job listings, and that the network, no matter how frugal it may be, hasn't fired its entire casting department in favor of these more cost-effective online solicitations:

New Universal chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde plan on working so closely together that they'll even share an office. Reports Var: "'The way we're thinking about it is we're going to reconfigure space so that it is where people will go and decisions will be made,' Shmuger said. 'Geographically and organizationally and even spiritually we'll be connected.'" It's going to be so adorable when they start finishing each other's sentences after their shared morning hot yoga sessions! [Variety]
Demi Moore is in final negotiations to play a tough detective (read: occasionally swears, wears a miniskirt) chasing the Kevin Costner/ William Hurt Jekyll and Hyde characters in Mr. Brooks. [THR]
Universal co-chair and Focus co-president David Linde's new closeness (see above) to Marc Shmuger should not upset his bliss with Focus partner Jim Schamus. This is Hollywood, after all, where mature adults reach understandings about such delicate arrangements all the time. [Variety]
"Burlesque-style dancing troupe" Pussycat Dolls are looking to break into reality TV, looking to bring their semitalented versatility in the singing and gyrating arenas to the small screen. [THR]
Perhaps the only thing the world needs less than another reality show (see Pussycat Dolls item) is another talking-heads pop-culture show. Still, E! plans their own Best Week Ever-style series, The Daily 10, featuring people rehashing the day's headlines. Not to be confused with E!'s The Soup which is a weekly series. [Variety]

A group of British celebrities are submitting themselves to a reality series called Alive: Back to the Andes that forces them to recreate the events following the 1972 plane crash that was the basis for the movie Alive:

E! may have promised Ryan Seacrest they would shitcan red carpet loose cannon Kathy Griffin as part of his deal, but their wily network execs made sure there was nothing in his contract that said they couldn't replace her with someone just as obnoxious hence the debut of fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi at the Golden Globes pre-show. While his arsenal of celebrity ambush material had nothing in it quite as classic as Griffin's "Little Dakota Fanning entered rehab today" quip, he still managed to win us over with his pubic hair-themed exchange with Eva Longoria, not to mention that round of grabby-hands involving Scarlett Johansson's rack. With the Oscars quickly approaching, Mizrahi recently went on record to let the world know that he has no plans of toning things down:

What do Hollywood's hottest starlets do when they need to make an awards season splash? That's right, say the folks at E!—they wear bright red dresses to indicate that they like having sex during their periods!

While the second-class citizens of the Paramount lot, CBS Corp's Untouchables, are feeling the humiliating squeeze from their New Viacom landlords, at least they still haven't been forced out of their offices. (For now, at least.) But E! has shipped off some of its less-favored Style Network children from their relatively fancy Wilshire Blvd. offices to the cut-rate production fat camp represented by new space in Glendale. Says one of the displaced:

Variety had news of the deal a couple of weeks ago, but today the E! network officially announced its multifaceted pact with Ryan Seacrest, a clear signal that the channel is on its way towards the cessation of all non-Seacrest-related programming:

Today's Page Six lends an uncharacteristically sympathetic ear to Kathy Griffin, who found out that E! had rolled up her heavily nip/tucked body in a red carpet and tossed her in the river only when her lawyer tried to find out about her Golden Globes assignment:

We have some miraculous news for those of you who took the cancellation of The Simple Life particularly hard: you can put down your self-mutilation implements and rejoice! E! has answered your prayers, ordering ten episodes of the series and divising a plot hook that finds a way to use both of the series' now-feuding stars, without having Paris or Nicole ever set foot in the same room!

A high-level Defamer operative found this discarded business card on the street while walking his dog in front of Beverly Hills High the other night. Did our man-on-the-street stumble upon an artifact of a Lolitaesque relationship gone bad? Was a forward-thinking E! producer scouting a target-rich environment for True Hollywood Story's future class of Tinseltown flame-outs? Or, unimpressed by a basic cable come-on, did a savvy high-schooler toss aside the card, withholding the jailbaity goods until someone from a network show strolled by? We could be way off on all counts, but we love a mystery.

The treasured, undercompensated employees of the notoriously, er, frugal E! network (as the joke goes within the company, you can't spell "cheap" without "E") have been informed that their boss feels their finanical pain. In a e-missive that just went out to the entire L.A. office, fearless leader Ted Harbert has done the second-best thing to giving across-the-board raises to his starving troops—he's commissioned a compensation study (to be completed in "a few months") to determine how his underlings' paystubs stack up against the competition's:

Several readers have alerted us to a special event over on E!'s Wilshire Blvd. campus, where the new(ish) executive regime might be trying to make a clean break with the past. That's right—yard sale! They're not only selling off t-shirts of long-canceled shows, they're hawking their former CEO's old furniture: