I’m not quite done being devastated that Dirt was canceled (that show was genius, people!!! GENIUS!!!), but at least Courteney Cox is moving on — she’s signed on to do a pilot of a show called Cougar Town. Rowr.

ABC has ordered a comedy pilot in which the former “Friends” star will play an attractive newly single 40-year-old mom with a 17-year-old son. It comes from “Scrubs” creator Bill Lawrence.

“Forty-year-old women on TV are so beautiful and perfect and wrinkle-free,” said Lawrence, who first worked with Cox when he was a writer on “Friends.” “People don’t do the reality of it, and there is a real comedy area about a woman who is talking about Botox, about having sex with the lights on and how her body is changing.”

This is the kind of show that could either be unbelievably awesome or totally tragic. I like Courteney a lot, and I hope it does well.

This is a fun little “Thriller” viral video made by some French community college students.

Note that it’s all one shot.

Cool, eh?

I wanted to wait until Friday to show you guys the pics of Leo in his ladybug costume, but we did a test run today, and I just have to show him off NOW. I can’t wait another second to share him with the world.

How absurdly cute is he??????

More pics here.

I was toying with the idea of running a Cutest Pet Costume contest for Evil Beet readers, but, ya know, Leo would have to win no matter what, so it wouldn’t be fair. HOWEVER, if you want to send a photo of your pet in his/her costume to evilbeet@gmail.com, subject line “EB Pet Costume,” I’ll just run them all on the site so we can ooh and ahh over your adorable monsters. I LOVE PETS IN OUTFITS!!!

Multi-hyphenate Ice Cube has one frontier left to conquer: television. And that won’t be left for long. Cube has signed a deal with NBC to write and produce an hour-long buddy cop series. It’ll be an action comedy.

“As we continue to expand our roster of diverse talent both on-camera and behind the camera, a guy like Ice Cube, who’s multitalented, is someone we really wanted to be in business with,” said NBC chairman Ben Silverman. “He’s had an amazing career, to have gone from NWA to this.”

Can I just say how much I love that an NBC chair with the name of Ben Silverman just casually dropped a reference to NWA? Love it. I sincerely hope that at some point prior to the election John McCain manages to talk about the economy and note that “cash rules everything around me: CREAM!”

Will Cube show up in the series? Maybe.

“We really want to capture his voice and his eye for talent, and his producing acumen,” Silverman said. “If he appeared in the pilot or series, we’d be really excited about that.”

Aw, I have such a soft spot in my heart for Ice Cube. My college boyfriend was a huge fan, and so I spent many years listening to The Predator over and over again. “Today Was a Good Day” was our song. I knew every word to that entire album. My boyfriend and his buddies used to get me drunk and make me rap at parties. Praise the Lord, this was in the days before everybody had digital cameras with video, but still. There are photos. And they’re not pretty. But I guess of all the things a boyfriend at Arizona State could get me drunk and make me do at parties, I got off comparably easy. And it’s not that I’m saying that the entire male population is Arizona State is kind of rape-y, but I’m not really denying it, either. GO SUN DEVILS!

Gwen Stefani just released this photo of her with her new baby boy, little Zuma Nesta.

Man, Gwen looks so much more beautiful without pounds and pounds of makeup. I’m glad she went with a more subdued look for this shot. But I still think the baby’s name sounds like a birth control pill.

You guys wanna know something awful?

Like, totally horrible?

After all my encouragement to get you guys to register and vote, I’m not going to be able to vote!

And, no, it’s not because of that recent felony conviction for looking so good it should be illegal. (ZING!)

I haven’t been back to LA since I left rather suddenly in February, and I’ve been missing my friends there a lot lately, and I wanted to get back to see everyone before the holiday madness began. So, without thinking about it, I booked a flight earlier this week to go there next week. And today it hit me that I’m totally not going to be able to vote now! I’ll be in California on Election Day! I’m registered in Washington, and I’m too late to do an early ballot! See? All the celebrity PSAs in the world can’t prevent me from being a total fucking moron.

Update: Never mind! My friend told me I was too late for early voting but he was wrong! Washington will still allow me to do early voting if I drive my ass down to Renton and do it in person. So I AM VOTING! WOO HOO!

We lost an important piece of Americana this weekend.

Estelle Reiner, the wife of Carl Reiner and mother of Rob Reiner, was also an accomplished painter, jazz singer and antiwar activist.

But you know her?

As the “I’ll have what she’s having” lady from the Meg Ryan orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally.

Estelle passed away at her home in Beverly Hills on Saturday at the age of 94.

You will be missed, Estelle, but — rest assured — never forgotten.

“No one wants to see an old hooker. Do they?”

Julia Roberts, when asked on Monday about the possibility of doing a Pretty Woman sequel.

Of course they do, Julia. Denise Richards’ reality show got picked up for a second season, didn’t it?