American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee is giving acting a shot. She has been cast as a sorority girl in an upcoming Adam Sandler-produced movie that does not yet have a title.

According to Entertainment Weekly, McPhee will "co-star" alongside funny girl Anna Faris, who plays a Playboy bunny who has been evicted from the mansion. Faris becomes a den mother to a super lame sorority, of which McPhee is a member. Rumer Willis also has a role. It will reportedly begin shooting late this summer.

Katharine has a background in acting-- according to her official bio, she studied at the Boston Conservatory and the California State Summer School for the Arts. She even had a role in an MTV pilot that never made air. What I'm trying to say is... the girl has been groomed for this kind of thing.

Scott Baio has a new reality show coming to VH-1 called Scott Baio Is 45...and Single. The only problem is, Scott Baio isn't really single. This story says that the former Happy Days actor is actually in a long-term relationship with former Playboy Playmate Renee Sloan.

Baio has supposedly been dating Sloan for a couple of years, including during the filming of the reality show. Sloan also used to be Pam Anderson's stunt double on Baywatch. Baio dated Anderson too. It all gets kinda tricky. Was Sloane Anderson's stunt double in her private life too?

What's up next for our recently ousted Idol contestants?

According to AOL's exit interviews, Antonella Barba WILL NOT be posing in Playboy. She did, however, tell People, she is "not opposed to acting or modeling or something." And she wants to "do pop music," but would add her own style to it.

Meanwhile, Sundance is heading back to Texas to get a band together. He told People, "I'm going to throw down everywhere I can do it and just be a road warrior."

Sundance doesn't hold a grudge against Sanjaya, whom he thinks will "go far" especially if he gets some "confidence in his vocals."

Sabrina Sloan and Jared Cotter also went home last Thursday night. They both told AOL that they were shocked to be going home so soon. To read more of the Idol exit interviews with the ousted contestants, click here.

Love will always find a way. Page Six is reporting that Hugh Hefner may be marrying girlfriend number one and star of The Girls Next Door Holly Madison. While no official announcement has been made, word is that Hef is orchestrating the wedding to capitalize on the popularity of the reality show, and of course, he loves her.

If the show is any indication, Holly is the most devoted of Hef's girlfriends. She's waged a long and hard campaign to score that ring on her finger. I don't watch this show religiously, but it is among my guilty pleasures. I've always felt bad for Holly. She clearly loves the old guy, but she has to watch him scamper about with someone like Kendra, who spends her free time having custom grillz made for her teeth. I suspect that Kendra, who Holly reportedly hates, will get the boot once Hef goes exclusive, but God only knows what "monogamy" means when you're an octogenarian playboy in the post-Viagra age.

In a recent interview with Playboy, outspoken American Idol judge, Simon Cowell, bashed musical icon, Bob Dylan, saying he "bores me to tears." Cowell often berates the young unknowns vying for Idol-status on the hit reality show, causing some of them to dissolve into tears or lash out in angry tirades. I'm pretty sure, however, that Dylan isn't going to be shedding any tears over Cowell's disapproval. The man, while not my cup of tea, is a musical legend, past needing praise and approval from the snippy, British TV-judge in order to sell CDs.

Also in the Playboy interview, Cowell praised Idol's very own Kelly Clarkson, comparing her to "a young Aretha Franklin". Not surprisingly, Cowell said he preferred Clarkson's music to that of Dylan's. Meanwhile, millions of Dylan fans everywhere are asking themselves "Who the hell is Kelly Clarkson?"

Ooooohhh, this is good news... good news, indeed:

Tricia Helfer, who plays one of the Hot Cylons -- Number Six, to be specific -- on Battlestar Galactica, is scheduled to appear in Playboy next month. She's a former Victoria's Secret model, so it's not like this is the first time she's been photographed nude or scantily-clad; heck, just call up her name on Google Images and you'll see plenty of examples, from Maxim and other sources. It's just that Playboy does things... I don't know; they just do things right. Whether the airbrushing looks more realistic, or the fact that they surround their models in shimmering fabric (or hay bales or fountains or whatever...). Let's just say that they'll treat her well there.

E! Entertainment Television has given the greenlight to a third season of The Girls Next Door, a behind-the-scenes look at life inside the Playboy Mansion with Hef and his three girlfriends Holly, Bridget and Kendra. To no one's surprise, the show is the E! Network's most popular.

Unfortunately for the girls, they may have to up the ante. Former Playmate and Mansion resident Izabella St. James is on the verge of releasing a tell-all book about what really goes on inside the Playboy Mansion. Try not to be too shocked, readers, but it involves s-e-x.

If you think our political system is wacky, check out the Bahamas. There, Anna Nicole Smith has actually become an early election issue. Smith moved to the Bahamas in July and gave birth to her daughter there in September. Her son also died the same day. Lawmakers are at each others' throats, claiming that the government is giving the former Playboy model special treatment. She received fast track treatment to declare residency in the Bahamas and the coroner also skipped over a backlog of investigations to determine the cause of her son's death (he died of a lethal mix of methadone and anti-depressants). Opposition lawmakers, who want to take control of the government in next year's elections, are calling for the resignation of the Immigration Minister who granted her residency. Now, thanks to Anna Nicole, one of the main issues for the opposition party is a review of requirements for legal residency.

Former Angel and Buffy star Mercedes McNab is the cover girl for the November issue of Playboy. Mercedes had a long recurring run on both Whedon shows as Harmony Kendall. Following the end of Angel she did the short film Miles From Home. She also has the horror film Hatchet in the can. You can find out more about that one at the movie's website. It looks fantastic, and seems to be getting a lot of good press.

Of course, Mercedes isn't the first Buffy alum to work for Playboy. Charisma Carpenter appeared in the June 2004 issue. It's a trend I would like to encourage. Maybe we can look forward to Clare Kramer in the May 2008 issue? Anyway, if you would like to see what all the hubbub is about, you will find the pictures right here. I have to stress that there is nudity, and they are not safe for work. Unless you work at a place that doesn't mind you surfing for pictures of boobs. If you do, that's a nice gig.

We should know in the next couple of days how exactly Anna Nicole Smith's 20 year-old son Daniel died. He was found dead in Anna Nicole's Nassau hospital room, three days after she gave birth to a daughter. Officials say they know the cause of death, but are awaiting toxicology test results before making it official.

But in an odd new twist, sources are saying that there was a third person in the room with Anna Nicole and Daniel Smith, and that some sort of criminal charges could be filed in connection with the death. They really aren't saying more than that, and I guess we'll have to wait til the end of the week to see exactly where this is going.

You've seen her on The Drew Carey Show, you've seen her on One On One, you've seen her on Hope and Faith, and you've seen her on her own show last year, the short-lived Bad Girl's Guide on UPN. Now, you can see her on...Jim Carrey!

Sorry, that was rude. I guess I just don't see these two together. Sure, they're both goofy and all that, but for some reason I'm just surprised at the pairing. Why? I don't know, that's Dr. Phil and Oprah territory. There's just something about these two being together that doesn't quite click.

But what the hell do I know. I'm a very lonely man.

Last week's winners:

1 star to Tucker: "Next week on Wife Swap..."
2 stars to Brent McKee: "Eric & Jermey finally meet a female they DON'T want to have sex with. It's not that she's a camel, just that she's an ugly camel."
3 stars to Jason: "The Frat Boys asked their guide where they could see some "camel toe", and the inevitable disappointment followed."

This week, a scene from Thursday night's Everybody Hates Chris:

(S01E20) In this age where depictions of sexual fantasies which cover the entire spectrum from mildly titillating to mind-bogglingly depraved are available to anyone with an internet connection, a television episode about a kid swiping his dad's Playboy almost seems like something Norman Rockwell would have painted.

Those of us who grew up before the advent of the internet each have our own story about the time we first discovered our dad's hidden treasure of skin mags. I grew up on a farm and discovered my father's collection of Playboys from the '70s and '80s in an old wooden shed, resting inside a stack of dresser drawers. Like any boy who was too young to really be interested in sex yet, I found the magazines to be equal parts fascinating and repulsive. As much as our parents would try to protect us from such things, discovering those magazines was a kind of rite of passage for many young boys. You didn't know what you had found exactly, but it opened a window into the grown-up world you never knew existed. These days, that window no longer exists. In fact, the whole damn wall has been removed and replaced by an endless digital conduit of smut pouring out of the computer monitor of anyone with the ability to type the word "boobs" into Google's search field. An old copy of Playboy with nothing more than a nude female lounging next to a fireplace seems downright quaint.

That's because she and her husband, director John Asher, filed for divorce in Los Angeles.

This article says that McCarthy "currently stars in UPN's The Bad Girl's Guide." Wow, is that actually still on the air?