· Neil Patrick "other out gay actor on a network TV series" Harris, who recently stood alongside noted pink F-bomb detonator Isaiah Washington while announcing the People's Choice Award nominations sans gay-slur incident, weighed in with his thoughts on the matter: "I was just sort of stunned that anyone would want to rehash any of that again. But I think the people, the classier people, handled it as they always do." In case you're still in the dark, "classy" is the new code for famous gays and their best friend co-stars who offer to beat up their homophobic tormentors on their behalf. [People]
· Ellen DeGeneres focused on the word itself, telling Extra: "This particular word is thrown around all the time at the workplace, at the playground, on the sports field and no one gets outraged. Hopefully this incident will put an end to this and people will stop using this word and other hateful words once and for all." Let's hope the insanity stops here, and that Jorja Fox isn't forced to drop by Ellen to tearfully recount the time Gil Grissom called her a "greedy rugmuncher" upon discovering she ate the last craft service banana. [Extra]
· John Mayer addresses the controversy on his blog today, suggesting the most poetically just penance would be for Washington's Grey's Anatomy character Dr. Preston Burke to "come out to his friends and colleagues as a gay man!!!" (Extra-squealy triple exclamation marks his.) He then proceeds to script how that scene might play out, for what feels like an uncomfortably long, not particularly funny, length of time. [JohnMayer via Towleroad]

With his dream gig on the line, Isaiah Washington appears to have reassessed his position on not hiring a "great shiny publicist" to help him rehabilitate his now tarnished, no-longer-welcome-on- Atlantis-Cruise-Lines image. He released this mea culpa just moments ago:

Despite appeals from gay rights groups to apologize, Isaiah "I love gay" Washington remains stubbornly tight-lipped regarding his use of the word "faggot" to disparage Grey's Anatomy co-star T.R. Knight, a wound reopened when he shouted it again in a denial of the incident to a roomful of reporters at Monday's Golden Globes. ABC brass, realizing they have to say something, has released this preliminary statement on the matter:

• T R Knight [YouTube via Towleroad]

Perhaps not wanting the last word in Grey's Anatomy FaggotGate (née ChokeGate, but no one cares about the Patrick Dempsey component anymore) to be Isaiah Washington's Golden Globes denial that he ever angrily uttered the slur that drove T.R. Knight from the closet or castmate Katherine Heigl's defiant offer to "throw down" on her offended best friend's behalf, Knight will make a stop on Ellen DeGeneres' couch today to officially call bullshit on Washington's version of the story. In the preview clip on the show's website, Knight unambiguously says, "He referred to me as a faggot...it's such an awesome word, isn't it?" Unfortunately for Knight, even this clarification of the controversy will probably provide Washington, so proud of not hiring a "great shiny publicist" to manage the controversy (that's right, "I love gay. I wanted to be gay. Please let me be gay." was all his), another ill-advised opportunity to explain himself; expect a statement from the actor later today finally admitting that he used the word, but that he meant it "only in the most awesome possible way."

Even on Hollywood's Second Biggest (And First Drunkest) Night, Isaiah "Dr. McChokey" Washington found himself unable to escape the lingering spectre of Chokegate, in which the homophobic slur Washington allegedly hurled while in the middle of a high-minded debate with co-star Patrick Dempsey over their professional relationship launched other co-star T.R. Knight out of the primetime closet. While Washington offered a red carpet soundbite expressing his unbridled enthusiasm for all things queer ("'I love gay. I wanted to be gay,' he said. 'Please let me be gay'"), the controversy-hungry press corps wouldn't let him off the hook when he arrived backstage following Grey's Anatomy's Globe win. Reports Access Hollywood:

The idea that a hit TV series could affect the fashions of the times is hardly new, as anyone who has ever attended one of those Miami Vice-inspired sock-burning protests of the mid 1980s can attest. But current ABC ratings juggernaut Grey's Anatomy has added yet another wrinkle to the concept of primetime-influenced style, by transforming traditionally conservative hospital dresscodes into hotzones of skirt-hiking, five-o'clock-shadow-growing medical professionals hoping to score like their McHorny TV counterparts:

· The arrival of these photos has been threatened for a while, but Courtney Love finally shows off the new girls.
O.J.'s book and TV special might be canceled, but at least we still have If I Did It! The Musical to satisfy all of our hypothetical murder explanation needs.
With all the chokings and inadvertent outings out of their system, the cast of Grey's Anatomy is once again a happy family.
"Daaaaad, shut up! The inflamed liver totally went away once I stopped drinking an entire bottle of Grey Goose in one sitting."
· Quite frankly, the C-list Serial Killer isn't working nearly fast enough.

A press release in our inbox alerting us to the upcoming nomination announcements for the 33rd Annual People's Choice Awards isn't typically the sort of thing we would bother mentioning, regardless of how thrilled we may be at the prospect of George Lopez getting the popular recognition he so richly deserves as one of America's Favorite Television Actors. But something about the lineup chosen to read this year's nominees struck us as noteworthy:

· Is Channel 7's Eyewitness news anchor Marc Brown just being paranoid, or has he been getting funny looks around the studio's donut table all day?
· Isaiah Washington apologizes! Okay, McFaggot-hater, we'll alert the media. (Oh wait—we kind of just did.)
· Did Dixie Carter publish her personal phone number on the internet? And more importantly...do we care? [Third from the end.]
· "Queen Elizabeth has 10 times the lifespan of workers and lays up to 2,000 eggs a day." We missed that scene in The Queen, though we did love the sequence when Helen Mirren reached over for a cup of tea, then sucker-plunged her tailbone into James Cromwell's abdomen and sucked him dry. [via Regret The Error]
· And as our parting gift to you, please enjoy the many Paris Hilton-themed jokes this headline might afford you.

There may have been a rainbow-colored lining to the dark cloud of incivility that has been hanging over the Grey's Anatomy set recently, but that has done little to ease the high tensions still running between stars Isaiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey. The widely reported altercation had Washington allegedly outing co-star T.R. Knight to the cast and crew in just about the least "up with Gays!" language imaginable, moments before shoving Dr. McDreamy by the neck, an assault that inspired an entirely new vocabulary of "choke"-rooted terminology. (Chokegate, Dr. McChokey, David Chokachi, etc.) But all that is now thrown into question—at least according to this report, sent in by a Defamer operative who exists merely one personal-training degree of separation away from McDreamy himself:

Not everyone was caught by surprise when Grey's Anatomy star T.R. Knight slipped in a subtle, "So I'm gay, no big whoop, could you pass the yams?" Thanksgiving-style outing last Thursday—at least not according to the pinging of our commenters' highly attuned gaydar, not to mention the counsel of a highly-placed Defamer operative who quietly confided to us, "I suspected something was up when he showed up to the Tony Awards with blue hair." Count CBSNews.com's Rob Todd among those in the know as well, as has been on to Knight's not-so-interesting non-secret for at least a month now. He explains:

In what seems like an unanticipated consequence of yesterday's National Enquirer report that choke-happy Grey's Anatomy surgeon Isaiah Washington may have let slip a gay slur directed at the sexual preference of a castmate (well, two slurs, as long as we're keeping track) while in the process of trying to strangle the smirk off Dr. McDreamy's face, actor T.R. Knight has outed himself to People, apparently ending minutes of controversy surrounding the identity of the target of Washington's insult. We hope that the network or the show's producers try to get their hot-headed cast member some help for his rage issues, before a thoughtless remark about the set "being full of skinny bitches" made during his next blow-up prompts devastatingly thin co-star Ellen Pompeo to reveal on the cover of Vanity Fair that she's long struggled with an eating disorder.

Hoping to stretch its scoop on last week's on-set choke-down between Grey's Anatomy's Patrick "Dr. McDreamy" Dempsey and Isaiah "Hopes For A Cute Nickname All But Dashed By Roughing Up A More Popular Co-Star" Washington across two issues, the National Enquirer has sent out an e-mail blast update about the melee this morning, spotlighting Washington's attempt to remove all ambiguity from what he meant when he called Dempsey a "bitch":

Perhaps fearing that reports about Monday's McDreamy Vs. McChokey smackdown on the Grey's Anatomy set might spiral into sensationalistic gossip about Isaiah Washington grabbing a prop scalpel and threatening to "go all Nip/Tuck" on Patrick Dempsey's "pretty, pretty little bitch face" before being felled by a shock from a fully functional defibrillator, ABC's damage control technicians already have their hunky combatants downplaying the fight:

Rush & Molloy have independently confirmed a National Enquirer report (stories this utterly explosive require such a level of tabloid journalistic rigor) that "long-simmering" hunky-TV-doctor tensions between Grey's Anatomy co-stars Patrick Dempsey and Isaiah Washington finally erupted in a physical confrontation on-set this Monday, when Washington decided that he'd had enough of this Dr. McDreamy nonsense and that it was time to choke a bitch. R & M pass along the Enquirer report:

HarveyMania! The Weinstein Co. finds a home for their book business in Little, Brown and Warner Books, partners with international distributor UIP for releases in the UK, and has a variety of exciting film projects on tap, including Untitled Rob Marshall Musical and the Denzel Washington-directed Great Debaters. Hurray for Weinsteins! [Variety]
· Eric "Dr. McSteamy" Dane gets a regular gig on Grey's Anatomy, giving his character a full season to pit his abs against those of rival Dr. McDreamy. In the end, we suspect, there will only be room at the hospital for one cutely nicknamed, hunky doctor, and Grey's producers will have to find a new exotic disease or gory, freak accident with which to dispatch the newcomer. [THR]
Foreign moviegoers prefer World Trade Center's tragic rubble to Adam Sandler's magical remote, as WTC tops Click at the international box office. [Variety]
· Showtime extends its upcoming free preview weekend by offering programs to Yahoo users, hoping to hook the broadband crowd on its lineup of pot-selling soccer moms and lipstick lesbians. [THR]
Fox Atomic's upcoming, sequeltastic slate includes 28 Days Later, The Hills Have Eyes 2, and a remake of Revenge of the Nerds. Atomic was created to produce cheap films targeted to teens, who market testing has proven "totally hate" any idea they haven't seen before. [Variety]

· CTV aired the wrong episode of Grey's Anatomy last night, leaving fans completely unable to figure out how they were supposed to feel about the Skinny Bitch/Dr. McDreamy relationship this week.
SNL's Lorne Michaels prefers to think of cast members he lets go as plants in an "overgrown garden" that have to be "pruned," not as "expendable actors that have to be shitcanned to make his budget." Yeah, we can see why he prefers the gardening angle.
· People asks: Is Kate Bosworth too thin? We answer: It depends. Can you see her ribs through a wool sweater yet?
NBC runs VeggieTales through its network juicer, squeezing out all the Jesus-y nutrients in the process.
· We foolishly thought the idea of judges is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of Paris Hilton, but Above the Law has somehow found a way to mash them together.
· We suggest the term "upper decker" to describe this kind of cheap-seats hummer.

Have you ever found yourself watching a typically riveting episode of Grey's Anatomy on Sunday night, and in between the prefrontal ice-pick stabs of the cold headache you've developed from pounding half a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk, wondered exactly how star Ellen Pompeo maintains her exquisitely Zellwegerian figure? The answer to what makes the TV physician's white lab coat seem like a tarp thrown over a broom, it seems, is simpler than you ever dreamed. A high-level Defamer operative explains in a series of e-mails Friday night:

Let's forget for a second that a news editor at E! Online mixed up Dylan McDermott and Grey's Anatomy's Patrick Dempsey in the blurb shown above. (McDreamy...McDermott—easy enough mistake, right?) It's just not very nice to have downgraded the actor's McDreamy status because he told Barbara Walters that he struggles with a common learning disorder. Come on, E!, it's not like he admitted that he slept with Kirstie Alley (or, in these more liberal times, Vic Tayback) during the filming of Loverboy.