Poor Vince Vaughn. Not only is he plummeting down MSNBC's 'It List', but up until about ten minutes ago, the list makers couldn't even tell him from Mariah Carey.

By lunchtime on the West Coast, it's unlikely that there will be a single human being who hasn't seen the video of Tom Cruise getting blasted in the face with water from a prankster's microphone at the London premiere of War of the Worlds. The four menaces responsible were immediately chastised by Cruise, who called their "joke" "incredibly rude" and the trigger man a "jerk," then arrested on suspicion of assault (and later released on bail, pending possible charges by the victim). The always magnanimous Cruise probably won't press on with criminal charges (after all, he's done "enough publicity" for WOTW already); instead, he'll likely demand that the misguided quartet accompany him to the Celebrity Centre, where they will sit in an auditing room with the star until he can re-clear the repressed memories that cruelly flooded from the tip of their trick microphone.

· Scarlett Johansson bolts the Celebrity Centre, and Mission: Impossible 3, rather than wind up being proposed to on the Eiffel Tower. Who says these young starlet types aren't smart?
· The Maui Film Festival fetes The Butterscotch Stallion, the Caramel Mustang, and the Relatively Obscure Pinto.
· Note to Mena Suvari: If you let yourself be photographed coming out of a bar with a butch companion hanging all over you, people are gonna talk.
· This will probably give us nightmares all weekend.
· You tell 'em Bo! Winning is totally for pussies.

In what should have been a joyful collision of two of our obsessions ("Hey, you got your out-of-control starlet in my desperate action-star!" etc etc), Lindsay Lohan gleefully hopped upon Jay Leno's couch last night in imitation of one crazy-in-fake-love Oprah guest, and in so doing, forcibly retired the kinetic poetry known as Doing The Cruise. This is a sad day at Defamer HQ indeed.

While we were responding to the Cruise-Holmes engagement by marinating in a self-annihilating soup of warm bathwater and our own blood, sister site Gawker was on the IM horn with flack-star Lizzie "PowR Girl" Grubman, who provided some publicist perspective on the couple's carefully-orchestrated move toward the altar:

Yesterday afternoon, we wrote:
"Given the way that every step of the couple’s partnership has been botched by Cruise’s publisister, Lee Anne Devette, we wouldn’t be at all surprised if the announcement comes while a fist-pumping Cruise climbs to the top of the conspicuously phallic Eiffel Tower to shout down proclamations of his deep feelings to the assembled press like the King Kong of unconvincing love."

· "'I like a great sense of humor, a good personality and someone with a little spunkiness,' Katie Holmes says of her dream guy. 'Tall, dark, and handsome.'" Weel, she definitely got spunky...
· Attention Kate Mantilini diners: Just in case you neglected to read the warning on the menu, you are being monitored.
· Who does Sony have to burn at the stake to convince people that the Bewitched statue in Salem is a celebration of the witch lifestyle, and not just a cheap promotion for the upcoming movie (or the TV Land sitcom revival)?
·Greenlight this movie (and every movie like it) immediately: "'The scripts I get are always for the whore, or the motorcycle chick in leather, or the horny maid,' Alba says as she climbs a hill, panting slightly. 'I get all these screenplays that start, 'Tawnya is in the shower. The water streams down her naked, perky breasts.' " [via Whatevs]

Your guesses are in! Circle the drain of One Hair-Raising Blind Vice once more before moving on:

There are probably worse jobs than being a personal assistant to Lindsay Lohan—barbed-wire suppository tester or door-to-door herpes cream salesman spring to mind without too much effort—but no other gig leaves the former employee with an amusing array of "Lohanecdotes" to share with the internets. A "man-nanny" to an "unnamed" actress reveals what it was like to babysit his charge on a recent New York movie set:

There are rumors spreading around the War of the Worlds publicity tour (currently circling Europe and en route to Paris) that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have once again nuked the expectations of a still-skeptical public by getting engaged in Rome last night. The rumor holds that an announcement may come in Paris as early as tomorrow.

Green felt-fondling sister site Oddjack enlists a Maxim editor to handicap Russell Crowe's next victim (i.e., set the odds, not incapacitate with a malfunctioning hotel phone—Crowe's proven he can handle that part all on his own). Those in danger include any member of the service industry, Cinderella Man co-star Craig Bierko (whom Crowe has previously assaulted in the press), and the actor himself:

Wherein we invite our readers to tempt the instantaneous liquefaction of their cortical language centers by puzzling over the brain-smoothing prose of humpy E! gossip despot Ted Casablanca and hazarding a guess as to the identity of his weekly blind-item. No poof-pounding this week (even Ted needs a break once in a while), but a tricky game awaits nonetheless. Shuffle listlessly through the blighted landscape of One Hair-Raising Blind Vice:

Director/Friend of Harvey Kevin Smith tells British mag Uncut that pal Ben Affleck's turn in Truth, Justice and the American Way may finally curtail the relentless, public buttock-pummeling that's marked the last two years of the actor's career:

The clever folks at Accolo (we didn't have the attention span to figure out what they do, but whatever it is, we're hiring them) have found lost footage from Paris Hilton's infamous burger-fellating ad and cobbled together a far sexier version. We apologize in advance for any unexpected tumescence during your first cup of coffee of the day.

On second thought, a magazine photo spread screwing in front of lions might've been a lot subtler.

Radar does some digging and reports that Katie Holmes' Scientology-supplied BFF is all NOT-IV! OMFG!

Page Six reports that an interview with Jennifer Aniston for Vanity Fair will finally solve the "mystery" of her break-up with Brad Pitt. And it wasn't because she didn't want to interrupt her career with a wombful of Pitt's freakishly perfect genes, because she totally wanted that:

The NYT reports that the braintrust behind Cinderella Man met on Tuesday to try and make some sense of the movie's failure at the box office. (Of course, Russell Crowe's ill-timed bludgeoning of a hotel clerk didn't help, but wasn't seen as the deal-breaker.) Let the wringing of the hands, the gnashing of the teeth, and the wailing to a Creator who's cruelly indifferent to period boxing movies commence!

· The Butterscotch Stallion calls himself a "wild mustang," which prompts a reporter to get him to admit he knows all about his magnificent moniker. Our work here is done.
· NAMBLA embraces MJ, but will that support waver when they discover he's controversially reversing his boys-in-the-bed policy? [via Fishbowl LA]
· Buy the shirt, get the anti-Mark Cuban rant for free.
· Overzealous telecommunications enthusiast Russell Crowe is taking the fall for Cinderella Man shitting the box office bed.
· Katie Holmes gets audited.

Please, Mr. Drudge, take off the rhinestone-spangled glove and step away from the computer. We know that the trial was really hard on you, but unless there's something you're not telling us, you are not actually Michael Jackson and the DA does not have pictures of your barber pole.