The Tristar Autograph Pavillion, at the annual National Sports Collectors Convention in Anaheim last week, was a temple to stars so over, they wouldn't even score a bunk on The Surreal Life. (But who were happy to exchange a personalized headshot in exchange for a couple bucks towards that month's rent.) According to FishbowlLA, however, tucked in among the usual suspects—your Catherine Bachs and Erin Morans, your Jeff Conaways and Ruth Buzzis—were two actors getting a head start cashing in on their has-been status:

The Gays, if not the fundamental fabric of show business, are at the very least its highly ornamental stitching. So it should come as no surprise that Entourage, Hollywood's weekly, 30-minute glance at its own magnificent reflection, gets a great deal of mileage out of the constant, uncomfortable rubbing up of straight and gay cultures throughout the industry. Usually, that comes in one of two ways: 1) watching resident Gay eunuch Lloyd absorb yet another round of shells fired from Ari Gold's semi-automatic mouth, or 2) scenarios, such as last week's plot in which Johnny Drama showed way too much interest in his favorite masseur, which explore the comic possibilities that emerge when a rigidly hetero male is mistaken for/unwittingly acts like—mercy—a Gay. But PlanetOut.com's Personality Machine thinks we may not be giving the show's writers enough credit, and that the signs have been staring us in the face all along:

Serially troubled, lesser Baldwin brother Daniel gets a recurring guest role on The Sopranos, playing the star of the horrible horror film that Christopher has been working on. Baldwin will join Kevin "Johnny Drama" Dillon in HBO's stable of actors cast because their relationships to far more successful kin provide an instant, vaguely depressing subtext to every line they deliver. [THR]
Endeavor is happy to pick up ICM's recently dumped Nancy Josephson on the rebound, but she'll probably just leave her new partner gig the second CAA comes calling. [Variety]
Starbucks decides that frappuccinos go down better while reading shitty books, will offer Mitch Albom's For One More Day for purchase in their stores. In a related promotional move, the chain plans to start handing out unsold Akeelah and the Bee DVDs for use as coasters. [Variety]
The Florida Film Commission's new slogan of "Florida: Not As Hurricane-Plagued As You've Been Led To Believe" has failed to reverse the production slowdown the state is experiencing. [THR]
Google will provide New Corp's interactive properties with search and advertising services through 2010, helping Rupert Murdoch finally overcome his inability to track down and destroy the dozens of fake MySpace profiles bearing his likeness. [Variety]

We thought we'd be able to get out of our system all of the "absurd Hollywood life imitates semisatirical Hollywood art" observations regarding record-setting fake Entourage blockbuster Aquaman when The WB decided to make a pilot revolving around the second-tier, somewhat super-powered (Happy when wet! Above-average swimmer!) comic book hero. But then that Aquaman pilot became the fastest selling show on iTunes, some studio executives started getting crazy ideas about how the public obviously has an appetite for a character who spends him time chatting with trout, and we have this, as reported in today's LAT:

Fans of Entourage are already more than familiar with the work of Rex Lee, the actor who portrays Lloyd, Ari Gold's much-abused, yet fiercely loyal, assistant. AfterElton.com interviewed the openly gay Lee about the part, and while he promised Lloyd will be on the receiving end of many more flying staplers and almost-too-skillfully-delivered pejorative comments from Jeremy Piven regarding his race and/or sexuality, don't expect the writers to give the long-suffering agent-in-training a sex life any time soon:

· Superman Returns finds a record that Pirates hasn't yet claimed, winning the one-day, one-venue Chinese box office prize for hauling in $19,360 at a Shanghai Imax theater. [Variety]
Spike Lee signs an exclusive deal to develop a one-hour drama for NBC, prompting an NBC Universal TV Studio exec to gush, "And what's really exciting is to see his enthusiasm for television. He's already come in with so many powerful ideas," which in turn prompts us to wonder if his movie career's a little slow at the moment. [THR]
· Scarlett Johansson finally chews through her restraints in Woody Allen's dungeon, slipping through the wizened auteur's clutches to star in The Other Boleyn Girl for another director. [Variety]
In a much-needed triumph of tasteful corporate branding over tradition, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen is renamed the HBO Comedy Festival. [THR]
The CW will begin its life as a network with a couple of days of reruns, giving slow viewers a chance to figure out where their favorite WB or UPN shows now live. [Variety]

No sooner had the pay dispute involving Paulie Walnuts and Silvio been resolved, the curse of The Sopranos' final mini-season strikes again. This time, it's a production delay due to a surprise knee surgery for James Gandolfini:

The cockteasing suits over at HBO announced today that Sopranos star James Gandolfini has had an "unexpected" knee surgery, delaying the show's production schedule and thus pushing the series finale back another two months to sometime in March 2007. It's cruel, really: viewers wait for almost two years for the most recent season, and now everyone will have to wait another nine months for the six concluding episodes. Is that any way to thank a loyal audience? The dude bounces back from a bullet in the stomach and a coma in just three episodes, but knee surgery takes a couple of months. Like they couldn't just write a limp into the story? Alas, no — and now your Sundays will remain open like a gaping wound. The disappointment just serves as an aching reminder that we are but slaves to the cruel master of premium cable.

Page Six has already beaten us to the Ron Burgundy joke in today's item about a CNBC anchor who mistakenly (and hilariously!) reported that Pirates of the Caribbean 2 shattered™ the box office record of fictional blockbuster Aquaman. Say the Sixies:

· Superman Returns pulls in just™ $106 million over its seven-day opening weekend, as well as a Fantastic Four/Hulk-trailing, somewhat disappointing™ $52 million over the traditional three-day frame. [Variety]
· THR is not as reflexively pessimistic as we are, saying Superman "avoided the kryptonite of overhype and muscled its way to an estimated gross of a sturdy $106 million." "STURDY!" should make an excellent pullquote for the next round of movie posters. [THR]
· Foreigners love Superman! Moderately and solidly! Though the Man of Steel is still awaiting his debut in faraway lands that care about the World Cup. [Variety]
· Paulie Walnuts and Silvio finally settle their contract dispute with HBO and will continue on The Sopranos, obviating the need for a clumsy, expository pork store scene in which Bacala rushes in to tell the guys how the pair "got whacked by Big Chris Albrecht on their way over from last season." [THR]
· Ben Stiller will direct and executive produce a CBS comedy pilot starring wife Christine Taylor, who will play the typecasting-busting role of an actress married to a movie star. Stiller will be trotted out for cameos where appropriate. [Variety]

We quickly became bored by the plot of last night's episode of Entourage, an endlessly recycled sitcom standard in which "the crew gets a surprise visit from Dom, a recently paroled childhood friend from Queens," and soon found ourself curious about the careers of the show's day players. And so with the help of IMDb, we decided to learn a little more about the people we'd just seen utter a line or two and disappear, ride naked atop an uninteresting guest star, or meaningfully brush up against Jeremy Piven in a crowd scene. The results of our little journey to the bottom of the call sheet follow after the jump:

· Tony Soprano plans to meet with Paulie and Silvio in the back room of the Bada Bing, where he will tell them they're out of the their fucking minds if they think they're gonna shake down HBO for $200K an episode, ignoring Dr. Melfi's advice that he should try and see the dispute from the perspective of two character actors who are feeling somewhat underappreciated. [THR]
· Fox will launch almost all of its shows before the fall season "officially" begins, trying to get viewers interested in the series before they disappear for weeks because of the baseball playoffs. [Variety]
· HBO is in talks with "Everybody Loves" Ray Romano and 24 creators Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran for a comedy series in which Romano plays a billionaire with only six months to live. [THR]
· The MPAA and the the producers of football n' Jesus flick Facing the Giants are squabbling over whether the film received a PG instead of a G because the ratings boards finds Christianity too scary for small children. [Variety]
· The WGA East and West approve Constitutional amendments that will settle an ugly feud between the coastal factions without tragic gunplay. [THR]

Those who've been watching Entourage because they enjoy the girl-crazy, high-fiving sitcom adventures of the pretty guy, the tall dumb guy, the shorter dumb guy, the somewhat street-smart guy, and the hyperactive, foul-mouthed guy in the suit are apparently missing out on the multilayered charms of the "cult" HBO series. Fortunately, the LAT has charged a UCLA professor with revealing the Hollywood-decoding subtext behind the moments when Ari Gold drops the name of a real-life movie executive while an indifferent Vince floats in the pool at the Standard:

Perhaps the only thrill bigger than that of finishing a hard-won second place at the box office is the fanciful capture of the all-time opening weekend record. Today's Variety features this huge parody ad touting the performance of Entourage's Spider-Man-squashing pseudoblockbuster, Aquaman, proving that even fictional talent must be sucked up to in the trades, lest they feel unappreciated and make their next fake movie with a competitor.

Last night, hundreds of thousands of local Entourage fans gathered at viewing parties all over L.A. celebrating the show's third season premiere (what, you didn't go to one?), where they patiently waited for Johnny Drama and Turtle's pussy-chasing misadventures to carry them offscreen long enough for Jeremy Piven to engage in the hugging-out-of-bitches and deliver a tongue-twisting monologue sending up the industry's self-interested heartlessness. In yesterday's piece about Hollywood's continuing delight at seeing itself teased on premium cable, the LAT managed to find an agent willing to pretend to be appalled by Entourage's depiction of the baby-eating caste:

OK. So it's time we admit it. We're totally confused by the ad campaign for the new season of Entourage, which starts this Sunday night. (Opposite the Tonys. Dilemmas!) Yes yes, we know that Ari Gold is — or at least was — a major Hollywood power broker. But as we left last season, wasn't he unemployed, friendless except for gaysian Lloyd, and desperately trying to hang on to clients while working from a coffee shop? Now, it's a given that he'll soon be back to his old self — Ari's personality wouldn't allow it any other way, and, more important, the popularity of the character wouldn't allow it any other way — but, still, despite the ads' claims, we're going to have to say that for the moment Ari Gold can neither make nor break you.

At last night's after-party at Social Hollywood celebrating the the third-season premiere of Entourage, actresses Constance Zimmer, Perrey Reeves, and Emmanuelle Chriqui share a laugh as they try to sort out who played E's girlfriend, Ari's wife, and the studio executive who blew Ari in Cancun.

Who of us did not find ourselves getting lost in the melodrama of the "Gay Vito" Spatafore plotline on The Sopranos this season? After dieting his way down several velour tracksuit sizes, Vito followed his heart and found johnny cake-flipping love, only to lose it all in one of the show's all-time ugliest whackings. Joseph R. Gannascoli, the straight actor who brought Gay Vito to life, has made no secret of his shady, pharmaceutical-hustling past, but his more recent, legitimate pill-pushing dealings are now the source of a lawsuit:

This say-it-ain't-so memo just in from HBO headquarters on Bryant Park:

Having quickly admitted defeat in their last attempt at launching a hit comedy series with The Comeback, HBO has abandoned the treacherous terrain of the has-been actress psyche for the relatively upbeat milieu of the war in Iraq: