We love Elton John - we love him for his music, his lovely relationship, his frequent bitch fights, and more often than not, his willingness to dress up like a total idiot and throw a crazy costume party.

More than once the Defamer Australia team has arrived at a "dress up" party as giant ants/Michelle & Ferret/drag queens, only to find everyone else in smart casual. In other words, Elton's our people!

Well, imagine our distress to see Sir Elt' is thinking it might be time to stop dressing up now that he's getting on a bit. Say it ain't so, O Lord Of Over-The-Top costuming!

He said: "As you get older, you change the way you think, the way you dress."

Some of Elton's most famous costumes include dressing up as Donald Duck at a Central Park, New York concert in 1980 and another huge feathered creation at a 1976 gig.

Eleven years ago, Elton dressed up as French monarch Louis XIV - a rumoured £40,000 costume - at his fancy dress 50th birthday party at the famed Hammersmith Palais.

For his 60th last year, Elton and 'husband' David Furnish dressed as a Russian general and a U.S. Marine captain for the 1940s-themed bash.

Elton told CNN host Larry King: "Well, I mean I couldn't wear some of my giant chicken outfits to the Oscar party, A, because I wouldn't fit in them anymore, and B, because, you know, I'm 61 years of age next month and I don't dress as flamboyant as I used to.

"I always liked to dress a little differently from other people but I'm nowhere near the fashion victim that I was a long time ago."

If we can't say that's a constant in this fickle, fickle world, what can we say?

It's safe to say that "watching movies on SBS to be culturally enlightened" is more or less the "I read Playboy for the articles" of the late-20th/early-21st Century. If it's got bonking, sucking, fingering, jizzing, faffing or rutting, so long as it's delivered either a) in another language, b) in an arty manner, or c) all of the above, SBS want to show it to YOU!

Unfortunately, it seems the Australian Communications and Media Authority tuned in the one night when a Japanese schoolgirl wasn't getting made an honest woman by a tentacle monster, and instead chose to check out the rather thoughtful and low-key documentary, Obscene Machines, which aired last year (with a rating of MA15+) - and they have a few things to discuss with SBS at dinner tonight, young man/lady!

The documentary focused on how technology is used to spice up sex lives, including items such as robotic sex machines and vaguely life-like dolls.

ACMA noted two segments that breached broadcasting rules and were unsuitable for screening in the MA15+ category.

One two-and-a-half-minute segment featured close-up shots of a naked woman apparently being penetrated by a mechanical dildo; the other focused on an elderly man's use of a life-like sex doll called Emma, modelled on his 18-year-old ex-wife.

ACMA rejected SBS's argument that a large proportion of the program dealt with the sexual activities of the old and disabled and was informational.

"ACMA considers that the treatment of the subject matter in Obscene Machines is adult in nature and is therefore unsuitable for ordinary 15-year-old audience members," it said in its report.

The rest of it was actually quite wonderful, particularly the stuff about the disabled employing "bot sex" (i.e., with 'robots', not up the back door) to rediscover their sexuality, so it's a shame the ACMA have to get all hot under the collar about this in particular.

People who like to have sexy with Johnny 5 are people too, ACMA!

If you, like the Defamer Australia team, cruise the online news portals throughout the day, chances are you would have seen the piece that went up around lunchtime today on News.com.au about Chantal Sebire, a Frenchwoman suffering from a rare cancer, who is requesting President Sarkozy allow her a death with dignity via euthanasia, which is illegal in France.

If you have read the story, then you will have also seen the pictures of Ms Sebire's condition, which involves tumours that have attacked her nasal passages and disfigured her eyes and face beyond, one would imagine, recognition.

And just in case you didn't see the pictures, News.com.au has put together a handy gallery, which they have breathlessly termed "In Pictures: Chantal Sebire's terrible suffering".

Now, what is most notable about the interview with Ms Sebire is that she does not once mention her appearance, or her face, or even the tumours themselves beyond how they have affected her senses and the pain they cause.

So what bothers us is the way News.com.au have taken it upon themselves to wheel out Ms Sebire's case as some sort of afternoon snack break Joseph Merrick-lite tale, with a gee-whiz gallery to boot, as though she just can't bear to go on living looking like this. Without the pictures, would News.com.au bother giving front-page banner space to the story? Posting photos of Ms Sebire with captions like "Painful cancer ... Chantal Sebire just wants to die with dignity" doesn't make this any less of a blatant attempt at generating some car-crash site traffic.

Then again, we're not sure why we expect even a modicum of decency from the people that brought you this, this and this.

After our last blast of adorable toddler cuteness, our friend Sam forwarded us this clip.

Who cares if nearly 39 million people have already seen it, we never claimed to be on the cutting edge of video offerings! It is sweet as pie and a nice way to get through your Wednesday.

Truly. Epic. Lulz.

Great news for aspiring actors residing in the greater Pittsburgh area who just so happen to also be inbred: A casting notice for Julianne Moore thriller Shelter seeks background players to play the famed deformed mountain folk of West Virginia. Or, as they put it, "Extraordinarily tall or short. Unusual body shapes, even physical abnormalities as long as there is normal mobility. Unusual facial features, especially eyes... 9-12-year-old Caucasian girl with an other-worldly look to her...Could be an albino or something along those lines -- she's someone who is visually different and therefore has a closer contact to the gods and to magic. 'Regular-looking' children should not attend this open call.'" [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]

If you've not yet heard the tale of the Buffalo news crew Oscar night gaffe, it goes something like this: Shortly after Best Director was announced, a technical mess-up caused the audio of a conversation between a local ABC news team to be broadcast to the general public. It's the content of that exchange, warranting a statement of apology from the network, that is truly hilarious. But we'll allow you to discover that on your own, in the footage above. Once you're done watching, we invite you to provide your own dismissive, nine-word synopses of any of this year's nominees.

Paris Hilton is not going to just stand by idly while the likes of Lo Conrad and her posse of entitled Hills chickettes steal all of her thunder. The lazy-eyed heiress is returning to the reality television fold in a yet-to-be-named project from Ish Entertainment, the production company recently founded by former Vh1 reality show maestro Michael Hirschorn. The show will revolve around Paris Hilton's attempts to comb through a gaggle of camera-ready twentysomethings an attempt to find a new "best friend" (read: someone who she'll gladly appear with for a few reunion show photo opps and then promptly never call again). But wait, that's not all! In a move likely prompted by being repeatedly passed over by magazine editors in favor of her spawning friends, Paris is desperately trying to reignite her fading star (a la Sunshine) by, you guessed it, strutting around town with a new boytoy on her arm.

Industry drones filing into their offices this morning were greeted with not quite your run-of-the-mill THR cover, but rather the somewhat startling, full-color image above. It all comes courtesy of the Belvedere Vodka company, as envisioned by photographer Terry Richardson. And while it took us a good ten minutes to figure out the connection between a trades publication, smooth spirits, and a Mischa Barton-esque woman reapplying lipstick shortly after having made acquaintance with an unidentified man's crotch, it suddenly dawned on us: Now that the For Your Consideration season is over, the For Your Appreciation ads are right there to take its place.

It's fair to say we chuckled heartily yesterday when we heard former McLeod's Daughter star Aaron Jeffrey had been accosted by police in Sydney due to the fact he looks a lot like Wayne Carey.

The police claim they were not confused regarding the identity of the beefy bloke they were having a friendly chat to, but rather they're big fans of Aaron's (who knew the boys - and girls - in blue would be so into the horsey adventures of the McLeod clan and their chums?) but we're not sold...

Jeffrey, who was having coffee with former TV host Laura Csortan, was surrounded by officers from the NSW riot and public order squad.

The policemen insisted they recognised the actor and were talking to him because they were fans. But onlookers swore they had seen the footballer.

Jeffrey said he was regularly mistaken for Carey.

This'll probably come in handy when Channel 9 inevitably produce a telemovie based on Wayne Carey's recent troubles, and are attempting to cast the lead role.

· "If I could bottle the sexual tension between Bonnie Franklin and Schneider, I could solve the energy crisis." At least that's what Troy Dire said while watching a One Day At A Time re-run in the seminal Gen X opus Reality Bites. We can only imagine how depressed he would've become at the sight of a menopausal Bonnie Franklin. Even worse would've been the look on his face after seeing the visage of the now irascible Schneider sans his trademark pencil-thin pornstache. Reunions ain't always what they're cracked up to be. However, we think he would've gotten a good chuckle from Arnold Drummond's surprise appearance on the set.
· The next time you make your way to Jupiter, Florida, be sure and stop at the Burt Reynolds Museum! We hear that the cryogenically frozen corpses of his Cannonball Run co-stars, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr, are worth the trip in and of themselves. [Burt Reynolds Museum]
· Everybody's favorite underage film critic, Sexman, is back with a brand new review of Jumper ("It sucked. It sucked major. Rambo 3 was better than that piece of shit.") This goes without saying, but if you are related to Hayden Christensen, you won't want to watch this. [YouTube]
· We stopped watching Fox's Moment Of Truth after two episodes, mainly because it failed to be as sadistically voyeuristic as we had been led to believe. Looks like we stopped watching too early! [Vulture]

We can't say we were particularly surprised when we read this morning that Amy Winehouse is rumoured to be launching a signature line of clothing, accessories and make-up - it's the celebrity way. And you know, just as we loved to douse ourselves in Impulse Spice, we wouldn't say no, no, no (arf!) to a can of Amy Winehouse hairspray, either.

However, we were less than impressed with the way the Daily Telegraph decided to report on the 'news':

As if that weren't enough, they felt the need to stick the boot in a little harder on the actual page, with the shouty caption "TOTAL TRASHBAG ... WOULD YOU WANT TO LOOK LIKE THIS?" Well, we'd rather look like that than a News Ltd "Fashion & Beauty" reporter.

You lay off our Winegums, News Ltd chumps, or it'll be handbags at dawn.

We told you not long ago about the British press' fascination with Tilda Swinton's love life; well, now that she's an Academy Award Winner™, Swinton's private life can more or less be considered public - as she found when the Oscars press room took it upon itself to ask her how things were going with her older partner, Joe Byrne, and younger lover, Sandro Kopp.

Naturally, she took it in her stride.

Swinton, 47, appeared taken aback when one reporter asked her about what the media had called her "unconventional" love life.

She responded that she was raising her children with Byrne while living with Kopp, her "sweetheart" of three years.

"I think it's extraordinary that we're all really close friends," she said.

The actress chose to bring Kopp to the awards ceremony.

Honestly, we know she pretty much comprehensively eschews 'celebrity' and everything, but we LOVE Tilda. She and her band of merry men are totally our new favourite "celebrity" relationship envy objects.

If you had been thinking that Australia's most popular virgin and Good Christian was fair game for shouted-out insults, assuming that he was too nice to do anything about it, think again!

What's more, Guy now deals with unpleasantness in a way that is so nice, people don't know what to do, and end up like this.

Well, maybe not exactly, but one charming schoolboy was surprised to find Sebastian having a nice, friendly word to him after said schoolboy shouted "faggot" at the former Australian Idol.

"I caught up to him and he was laughing like he was the coolest kid around," Sebastian told Confidential yesterday.

"I just put my arm around his shoulder and said, 'Mate, that's not only uncalled for but it's really offensive and you could get seriously hurt if you said that to the wrong person.

"He was trembling and I didn't want to be aggressive at all, I was just glad to have taken the moment away from him."

Gonna insult someone? Watch out: The Sebastian is right behind you.

And Samuel L. Jackson can play him in the Hallmark Channel movie of his life, with Ryan from The O.C. in a breakout role as the gay man Guy befriends after saving him from certain death at Mardis Gras.

Rachel Zoe, you have been replaced...by a publicist. And it's not someone younger, less raisin-faced, or (if such a thing is possible) thinner. One Marilyn Heston has emerged, far from quietly, as the go-to-fashion-publicist when designers want to dress for rising stars like Anna Friel, Away From Her director Sarah Polley, she the resume to prove it. 'Member that tighter-than-tight dress Scarlett Johansson's breasts couldn't wait to pop out of when Isaac Mizrahi couldn't wait to grab them? Credit Heston. And those memories of a young Sienna Miller being hailed as fashion's newest darling? Credit Heston as well. And since we always like to keep our readers abreast of tomorrow's names you should know, here's one: Rodo. Nope, not what the kids are calling Frodo these days, but next year's Jimmy Choo. Ya heard it here first. [NY Times]

Finding themselves without a red carpet home after their deal with TV Guide Network went south, Joan and Melissa Rivers are still pressing forward with their catty Oscar fashion quips on a site called Stylelist.com. And they're not letting their Siberian spot in cyberspace stop them from dishing out their trademark red carpet digs, which span the range from who "should be locked away" (Julie Christie) to who they believe spent "hours covered in leeches to get that pale" (Anne Hathaway). But that's not the half of it. After the jump, find out who Joan thinks looks like they were "gift-wrapped at Macy's" and who "ain't gonna score tonight."

A belated notice of passing: Ben Chapman, a 6'5" former Marine best known for playing the title character in The Creature From the Black Lagoon, died Thursday of congestive heart failure in a Honolulu hospital. "The Creature suit was a one-piece outfit that zipped down the back with dorsal fins, hands that were gloves, feet that were like boots," he once told the Honolulu Observer, offering an uncannily similar description to the remains Janice Dickinson leaves behind after every skin-shedding. [LAT via WOW Report]

That Cirque Lodge in Utah sure sounds like one helluva wonder drug. After spending several weeks there attending to what TMZ claimed was a"substance abuse" problem, Eva checked out on February 7th (the same day Kiki Dunst checked in!), but was recently seen joyriding through the weekend party circuit. (Lest you forget, Ms. Mendes was once a Campari model.) But Eva's not the only Cirque alum who hasn't quite kicked whatever habit they went in there with; illustrious fellow Cirque-ers include David Hasselhoff, Mary-Kate Olsen, Richie Sambora and our favorite topless "art" model, Lindsay Lohan. So how well did each of these stellar examples of tip top health fare after leaving the Lodge, sober certificate in hand? From hamburgers to hoovering powder on the beach, the verdict is in.

Never one to wile away all of his leisure hours cavorting on a custom-made bed (forget round; this thing is encased in a giant, ceiling-mounted gyroscope), septuagenarian superproducer Robert Evans is forever on the hunt for new ways to extend his brand. His partnership with Oliver Peoples sunglasses is a perfect example: Bob brings the cool, they bring the technical savvy to produce a lens that can repel the UV rays of a tanning bed strong enough to incinerate a 40-50 lb. child, and voilà-- a hip new accessories line is born. Evans threw a party in its honor at his Woodland estate, and W magazine was on hand to take in the atmosphere:

As we noted several weeks ago, diminutive quick-cash loan company spokesman Gary Coleman has finally given up on playing the ever-dwindling Diff'rent Strokes-groupie field, and settled down with a lovely young lady named Shannon Price. Until now, little was known about the happy couple, save for the fact that Coleman sometimes accidentally launches things at Shannon's head in moments of anger, and that at the age of 40, he is still a technical* virgin. (*A post-wrap-party exploratory session with Dana Plato notwithstanding.) Well, The Today Show set out to correct all that, by squeezing the newlyweds on a couch alongside Al Roker for some get-to-know-the-Colemans time. Enjoy, and while you're at it, have a ball imagining what their kids will wind up looking like, should Gary ever overcome his sex-having issues.

Earlier this month, we voiced our concern that Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin) was in danger of becoming the next "Vote For Pedro" guy. Well, we just learned that a reporter from E! cornered McLovin at the Semi-Pro premiere the other night and asked him to respond to the item we filed. These were the first words out of his mouth:

I mean, [Efren "Vote For Pedro" Ramirez] did a movie with Jack Black after [appearing in Napoleon Dynamite], right? So, that's good."

· Any plans for Memorial Day weekend 2009? Great! That means you can catch the opening of Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, McG's utterly essential contribution to the futuristic-robot-killing-machine franchise that keeps on giving. [Variety]

· The WWE entered into a deal with Fox, giving the studio "a first-look deal" for any project starring one of their wrestlers, and first dibs on John Cena to voice an irascible musk ox in Ice Age: Boot Camp. [Variety]

· A three-month Chinese government ban on Hollywood product has ended, with a March release set for National Treasure: Book of Secrets and 10,000 B.C., after government censors screened both films to ensure they contained "no fingerprints of that lie-spreading Spielberg-devil." [Variety]

By now, we've all seen the video of Gary Busey's vampire-like neck-raping of Jennifer Garner on the red carpet the other evening. But you might not have seen (or heard) that Busey managed to pry himself from his coffin early on Monday morning and delivered a heartfelt (yet borderline creepy) apology to Garner on Ryan Seacrest's radio show. During this interview, we learn that The Buse also managed to spring another surprise attack on the carpet on Sunday (specifically, he interrupted a Fox News interview with George Clooney). However, as disturbing as all of Busey's confused red-carpet lunging on The Most Important Night In Showbiz was, we found ourselves even more disturbed after learning about his "interesting odor."

While there were certainly no lack of internet destinations to service your Oscars liveblogging and post-morteming needs, none of those takes can really hold a candle to the punctuation- and sanity-free zone of Courtney Love's own MySpace wrap-up. We take you now directly to the Courtney Oscars Live Feed:

Jerry Seinfeld, whom we most recently had the pleasure of hearing robotically introduce the nominees for Best Animated Short through the guise of the CGI star of his egregiously under-publicized Bee Movie, is currently being sued by cookbook author Missy Chase Lapine for comments he made on Late Show with David Letterman. On the show, he called Lapine, who had expressed concern that Mrs. Seinfeld had stolen the basic concept of her book, a "wacko" waiting "in the woodwork," "hysterical," and "a three-name woman...and many of the three-named people do become assassins--Mark David Chapman, James Earl Ray..." Now Seinfeld's lawyers are trying to have the suit thrown out, claiming the comments were jokes, no more harmful to Lapine's reputation than an exasperatedly humorous observation about airplane-peanut packaging:

It's quite the week of firsts for Diablo Cody. She won her first Oscar, she became embroiled in her first red carpet scandal and now, the first nude pictures of her have hit The Internets. Probably not surprising, considering her famed and well-marketed history as a stripper turned blogger turned screenwriter. A few of the more SFW pics, including her faithful recreation of Ali Larter's whipped cream bikini shot from Varsity Blues (somewhere, a Vanity Fair photog is kicking himself for not thinking of this idea first), appear after the jump.

Once we heard that the late night afterthought Jimmy Kimmel was planning a revenge video in response to Sarah Silverman's "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" viral sensation, it seemed inevitable that an onslaught of response videos would emerge. And just on the heels of Jimmy's subpar Ben Affleck spoof, Zack and Miri Make a Porno co-stars Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen are now getting in on the action. Shot on the set of the upcoming Kevin Smith comedy, Banks glumly strums the guitar and explains that she just had to take a ride on Seth's "weird-looking cock" ("It looks like an otter!" proclaims Seth) in order to meet Judd Apatow. With cameos from Office sidekick Craig Robinson, Traci Lords, Jason Mewes and Zack and Miri director Kevin Smith himself (who emerges towards the end carrying a shiny strap-on), this video not only earns brownie points for being a funny addition to the "I'm Fucking" canon, but also for its surprise twist ending.

Having fully rebounded from your chocolate-balls and cherry-bubble hangover, leap back into your regular routine with a glance at the weekend's box office numbers:

Katherine Heigl never struck us as the calm-as-a-cuke type, but she may have taken the whole Nervous Wreck facade a wee too far at Sunday's Oscars. Arriving with her momager, "Katie" completed her quite successful red carpet waltz, topping many best-dressed lists along the way. But apparently the Best Makeup presenter rushed off to the loading dock in a huff seconds after telling the audience just how nervous she was, to have one of her favorite guilty pleasures. After a stagehand asked her what was wrong, Heigl sputtered:

"It's finally over...I just need a cigarette."