Hey, did you know it's Friday? That means it's time for a probably apocryphal (but nonetheless enjoyable) gossip-crumpet from the dirt-dishing troublemakers from 'cross the pond:

Having enjoyed countless high-stakes gambling trips to Las Vegas and after starring together in the hit casino heist flick Ocean's Eleven, Hollywood pals Brad Pitt and George Clooney are taking the next, logical step: building their own casino. Reports Page Six:

Is there something unsettlingly familiar about Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka in the upcoming Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? The E! Online wonders aloud:

The unfailingly reliable National Enquirer reports that when Ashton Kutcher isn't regifting $3,000 Pottery Barn gift cards, Ugg boots, and garter belts (!) to his disabled brother back in Cedar Rapids, he and fiancée Demi Moore display a surprising curiosity about the human gastrointestinal system:

Laugh at Johnny Knoxville's tabloid-attracting, alleged Jessica Simpson-porking activities if you must, but he's obviously got the entertainment business figured out:

Angelina Jolie is extending her family the old-fashioned way, by jetting into Ethiopia, proclaiming, "I want that one!", and assimilating a poverty-stricken infant into her steadily-growing brood. Once the quicky adoption of her new daughter is complete, Jolie and newly politically-conscious man-friend Brad Pitt will next (private) jet off to Tibet to select a third delegate of the Security Council for their planned alternate United Nations (comprised entirely of adopted offspring educated solely on international location shoots), which will one day replace the decaying, ineffectual institution and usher in a new era of peace and unity.

The NYT breaks down Disney's recent, completely non-cynical revival of its Love Bug franchise, Herbie: Fully Loaded, into its constituent parts: product placement and shitergy. The movie's chock-full of Nascar-real advertiser bombardment and shameless ESPN (owned by Disney, naturally) tie-in buggery that encroaches into virtually every scene:

Our glossy cronies over at Gawker have pointed out the Yahoo Personals ad of an enterprising young man who's trying to get laid in NY by borrowing the instantly recognizable face of Hollywood's favorite fauxteur, Brett Ratner. Lest anyone think the director's e-trolling for companionship, the ad doesn't even make token stabs at Ratner-verisimilitude. (6'2"? Athletic body? 28 years old? Only looking for white chicks?)

Ewan McGregor rocks the world by revealing to Playboy that even actors from the very dignified, dry British Isles might like a side of sauce with their Method:

Do you think that prison didn't make house-arrested domestic diva Martha Stewart (that's M. Diddy to you, bitch) a lot tougher? In the new issue of Vanity Fair, Stewart (other prison nicknames: "The Plunger Princess" and "Switchblade Stewey") openly brags about her plans to escape from the hard time at her maximum-security mansion, from which she gets a mere 48 hours a week of work-related relief:

"Now I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury—is that the face of an innocent duck?"

Our pals at Gawker gleefully informed us (they even photoblogged it) that the world's most accomplished, crazy-in-fake-love couch abuser finally found a sofa on which he had yet to practice his craft, exuberantly trampling the cushions over at The View this morning, much to the delight of his clucking-hen hosts. They even obligingly lashed Cruise to the couch with a seatbelt. Funny! But imagine our disappointment to discover that the West Coast feed of today's The View featured John Leguizamo, not the publicity-shy War of the Worlds star. What gives, The View? How can you deprive us of our precious?*

Today's Page Six is playing it coy (not exactly "Butterscotch Stallion" salad-tossing coy, but coy nonetheless) in today's blind items:

Please indulge this brief, unhinged thought: Maybe hacktastic director Brett Ratner isn't going to ruin the new X-Men movie. From Page Six:

Sure, we talked a good game about how excited we were for last night's premiere of Being Bobby Brown and the accompanying game of modified-rules Edward Fortyhands, but when the chips were down and rolls of duct tape purchased, did we come through? No, we did not. (We did, however, get absurdly drunk, but that is a story for another time.) Luckily, the Fourfour blog didn't punk out the way that we did. He's got a recap and screen shots (like the one above) from the episode, freezing pregnant moments of delicate beauty ("Don't smother my food with your boogies" is particularly poignant) in time.

Maybe it's the impending holiday weekend, maybe it's the difficulty of the first part of the item, or maybe you're just tired of these blow-related blind items, but calling the response to today's item "tepid" would be like saying Lindsay Lohan is "mildly interested in exploring the Hollywood social scene." Take another peek at One High-Flying Blind Vice before we continue with this charade:

And just like that, the stallion hurdled the fence and disappeared into the sunset.

Yes, we've seen the incredibly viral e-mail (you can read it here) puporting to explain the connection between Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, and Matchbox 20 singer Rob Thomas. And this is all we have to say about it (besides issuing a inevitably futile request that people stop sending it to us): We immediately distrust any mass-emailed message that begins thusly: "A friend of mine just got back from LA and heard this scoop about Tom & Katie from someone who works at Universal..." Firstly, LA is full of nothing but filthy, filthy liars who would like nothing better than to destroy the man responsible for "Push." We live there, we should know. Secondly, as soon as we hear that the singer's received a mysterious delivery of cupcakes, you'll be the first to know. We fear that this e-mail of dubious truth value is obscuring something far more worthy of discussion: Tom Cruise's unshakeable faith in aliens.
· Fellow Scientologist John Travolta's Scientologist wife, who once bounced up and down on Tom Cruise's prone body while very convincingly screaming, "Don't. Ever. Stop. Fucking. Me!" in the early moments of Jerry Maguire, is unsurprisingly supportive of Cruise's evangelical efforts. [second item]
· "'We have always tried to resolve disputes short of litigation. That was not always possible in earlier years when we were forced to go to court to defend our rights and the rights of our parishioners to freely practice their religion. But as we have won more and more victories, we have had to resort to the courts much less. Nowadays it is a very rare occurrence.'" Has Scientology suddenly gone soft? Salon continues its four-part series. [You may watch an ad to read the story.]
· And just because every story has a Cruise angle, if you look hard enough: Cruise has always maintained that he doesn't see race, so he wouldn't even have understood the premise behind the recently-pulled reality show Welcome to the Neighborhood.

Wherein we invite our readers to submit themselves to the possibly unsafe implements of humpy E! gossip manicurist Ted Casablanca's online salon and guess the identity of his weekly blind item. This week: Closeted gays at altitude and still! more! coketastic young actresses. Take the Nestea plunge into One High-Flying Blind Vice:

Are those wedding bells we hear, or the sound of the rockets of celebrity-marriage annihilation whistling through the air, ready to destroy the media over the coming Fourth of July weekend? It's hard to tell, the sounds are surprisingly similar. In any case, US Weekly reports that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner tied the proverbial, probably temporary knot yesterday on the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos, saving the couple's much-rumored baby from technical bastardhood. And we hate to be crass on such a happy occasion, but we really hope that Affleck didn't mar the ceremony by whipping out the Benitals when the priest asked for the ring, for such antics have no place on the altar.