I know we’re supposed to hate our cable companies, but Comcast is really trying hard to stay one step ahead of the competition:

LaChania Govan made dozens of phone calls to the cable company to complain about service, but she said she was never rude.

So the Elgin, Ill., woman was shocked when her bill came and had the insult printed where her name should be.

Instead of her name, the bill had the “b” word printed on it.

Wednesday, Comcast said it fired two employees for the incident and also issued an apology to Govan.

“We are appalled by this treatment of our customer and want to extend our sincerest apologies” to LaChania Govan, the company said Wednesday in a statement. “This is not the way Comcast does business.”

Comcast officials offered Govan two months of free cable to try to make amends.

But she’s canceled her Comcast account, anyway.

Good for her. DirecTV must love this.

But this being Hollywood and all, he probably never will:

It seems that Saw is turning into a horror for Cary Elwes‘ bank account.

The blood-soaked movie, which also starred Leigh Whannell, Danny Glover and Monica Potter, was made for just $1.2 million but grossed a whopping $102.9 million worldwide and has been a solid seller on DVD. Elwes says he’s gotten peanuts for his efforts while his costars have made millions, and he’s taken his beef to the courts. […]

Elwes claims he was promised “favored nations” status among the cast and was guaranteed at least 1 percent of the producers’ net profits. He also alleges that, during a September 2004 press junket for the film, producer Mark Burg told Elwes he “would make more money [on Saw] than he had ever made before.”

Alas, he has not. Elwes says he only received a salary of $2,587.20 for his work on the film followed by a $53,275 bonus. […]

The suit claims that Glover is getting 2 percent of gross profits, while Potter has banked more than $250,000 in additional compensation.

Lawyers for the defendants aren’t buying Elwes’ argument. Attorney Martin D. Singer told the Los Angeles Times that the suit “clearly has no merit” and points out that Elwes was never forced to make the movie.

Another actor gets to ride the Hollywood “net profit” donkey.

Giddy up, Cary!

At least that’s what Simon says:

[Simon] Cowell’s mobile rings every few minutes. Sometimes it’s his mother, Julie, calling from her home in Brighton to tick him off for being too rude during the first episode of the new series of The X Factor (The ITV show attracted 6.6 million viewers - 40 per cent of the audience - on Saturday night.) Sometimes, it’s a US TV network, asking whether he is ready to accept a $25 million offer to host his own chat show.

With another hit show under his belt and lucrative offers from Hollywood, Cowell has every reason to smile. So it is unusual to hear him dismiss the X-Factor as “culturally insane” and his own talents “crap”, then saying his career is “one bad move away from being totally f*****”. […]

“If you are in a show that is successful in America, everybody loves you. I get these offers all the time which are so tempting but I have to keep reminding myself that I would be rubbish at all of them and, if I did them, I’d make a complete arse of myself and my career would be over.”

Cowell has been offered the chance to host his own chat show by all the big US networks. One network offered him $25 million to do whatever he wanted, in any hour on the schedule. “I could have dressed up in women’s clothing and cavorted with barnyard animals and they would have said: ‘Great. We love it.’”

Sounds like Simon’s been meeting with NBC.

There’s nothing like quitting your job and taking off on your private yacht for a well-deserved vacation with your supermodel wife and little son:

A relaxed-looking Lachlan Murdoch jetted into Sydney yesterday morning, ready to make the city his home.

Tanned and tubby, the former News Corp executive appears to have enjoyed swapping designer suits for more casual clobber. […]

His wife, Sarah, and eight-month-old son, Kalan, were not on the 7am flight from Tahiti yesterday. The family has been holidaying in Tahiti aboard their yacht. But Mrs Murdoch, a former model, is also expected home this weekend.

Mr Murdoch was met at the airport by a bodyguard and would not be drawn on his future business plans. “There’s nothing that I really want to go into, but it’s good to be off the plane,” he said. “I’m gonna have some breakfast and then have a kip.”

Reports have suggested that the abrupt departure has put the Murdoch dynasty into a spin. But the one-time heir apparent will continue as a board director and a company consultant.

Insider reports have also revealed a frayed relationship between the young-gun son and the father who refuses to retire.

Let the old man work if he enjoys it so much. Its not like he’s hurting anyone.

Ring in a new round of “pass-the-buck” as “The Island”s blame shifting continues full force.

It’s always funny how producers try to dodge the box-office bomb bullet, but end up with some sticky stuff dripping down their faces:

The star [Scarlett Johansson] is mad as hell at the husband-and-wife producing team of Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald because, as PAGE SIX reported last week, they faulted her and co-star Ewan MacGregor’s lack of star power for the movie’s flop. Parkes went as far as to tell zap2it.com, “Even lesser television actresses, quite honestly, would have more connection to that audience.”

Now the gloves are off, and insiders on the picture are blaming the producers rather than the two young stars.

We’re told that Parkes and MacDonald “were only on the set three times” and that they spent three weeks in June, right before the movie’s release, on vacation in Italy, where they were “basically uncontactable.”

Sources also tattle that director Michael Bay delivered a final print of “The Island” only two days before the press screening and that during a meeting in April at Parkes’ office, DreamWorks publicity chief Terry Press admitted, “I have no idea how to market this movie.”

A spokesman for Johansson tells PAGE SIX’s Tom Sykes, “We find it incredible that the producers of ‘The Island’ have blamed the low box-office results on the film’s two lead actors. This is a clear-cut example of the producers’ passing the buck and not taking responsibility for their part in making calculated mistakes throughout the film’s marketing.”

The rep continues: “Ms. Johansson is proud of her performance and the film… The film and the actors’ performances were overall well received by the critics. We put our trust in the professionals who sold and promoted this film. It is unforgivable that the producers continue to blame everyone but themselves.” […]

Parkes and MacDonald ate their words as PAGE SIX went to press, praising “Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor’s extraordinary work” and alleging that their “comments were taken completely out of context.” DreamWorks had no comment.

Makes me wonder what Steven Spielberg was doing during this clusterfuck.

Oh, that’s right, he was chasing after Kooky Cruise.

But not by choice.

According to the big, bad and evil Hollywood studio marketing departments, James Woods is the enemy and as such has to be stereotyped mercilessly as - you guessed it - an asshole in a suit:

Woods’ distaste for the studio system that has left him without a great desire to work. Woods, who may have already mentioned that he isn’t a big liberal, has issues with the way most writers are choosing to represent his demographic these days.

“In this politically correct era, the middle-aged heterosexual white guy gets to play one part, he gets to play the asshole in the suit,” Woods grouses. “That’s the only part they make anymore. That’s the only part there is for a white heterosexual guy. Sorry, but it’s the truth. Even when he’s the hero now: Like Tom Cruise in ‘War of the Worlds,’ he’s the hero, right? Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, H.G. Wells, how do you top that? They do a remarkable job of how the make the movie and so on, but he has to be a father who’s a lousy parent, a terrible ex-husband, blah blah blah.”

After the desire for oxygen temporarily kicks in: “You can’t be a heterosexual white guy and be a hero anymore. You’ve gotta be really flawed and really bad and a piece of crap. Otherwise, the marketing department says, ‘You can’t have white guys be decent people. They’re the enemy. They only put a man on the Moon and wrote ‘Hamlet.’ Why should we let them have any cred?’”

Because middle-aged heterosexual white guys need love, too?

Matt LeBlanc seems pretty banged up about the fact that he almost banged a “sexually aggressive” stripper during a recent motorcycle trip in Canada.

Wait, or maybe it was the other way around:

“FRIENDS” star Matt LeBlanc spills his guts to this week’s National Enquirer about how he almost cheated on his wife with a naked stripper at an all-nude club in Victoria, British Columbia. LeBlanc’s strangely fascinating confession � headlined “My Wild Night With a Stripper” � features photos of the unshaven actor holding his head in apparent shame and somberly sitting at a table with Enquirer reporter Steve Dennis. LeBlanc tells the improbable tale of how he was mauled by the “sexually aggressive” stripper while partying at the nudie joint during a motorcycle trip with five buddies. “The stripper was all over me,” LeBlanc claims. “I was drinking, and she was crossing the line… She was in my face, pushing her breasts into me and grabbing my hands to go all over her body. She was telling me to caress her and in my head I’m thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ If I had been sober, perhaps I would have acted quicker, but I was pretty drunk… When I realized the situation that was unfolding I felt I was being careless and irresponsible, and I had to get the hell out of there… I could not wait to get home. The guys said a trap had been set for me and I fell right in it, and that’s why I feel stupid and careless now.”

And horny. Let’s not forget horny.

It looks like Paris Latsis is trying very hard to keep his family in the dark.

Who can blame him?

DON’T hold your breath waiting for the Paris Hilton-Paris Latsis wedding. During the couple’s recent jaunt to Greece, the groom-to-be never even discussed marriage with his father, Grigoris Kasidokostas.

“If he hasn’t discussed this with his own father, how serious could it be?” Kasidokostas asked The Post’s Chris Erikson. “That should tell you the whole story.” […]

What’s more, recent reports that Latsis plunked down $12 million for a Beverly Hills nest for the lovebirds and bought Hilton a $5 million ring are ridiculous, he said.

“All of it is lies,” Kasidokostas declared.

He noted that his son doesn’t have the cash, as the $7.5 billion Latsis family fortune is firmly in control of Latsis’ mother, Mariana, and uncle, Spiro. […]

The father denied his son is the jet-setting playboy depicted in the press: “He’s a very, very good boy… a gentle, down-to-earth boy… not a playboy by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn’t have a lot of experience with women.”

Okay, now THAT I believe!

There’s no way you can get laid in L.A. with a GNR tattoo.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

If you’re anything like me, you too have spent the last five nights lying wide-awake in a puddle of cold sweat trying to crack the riddle of Lachlan’s abrupt departure.

Well, get ready for a good night’s sleep as I present to you the detailed recount of a heart-broken Lachlan in all its unfiltered tenderness:

Last Friday, July 29, shortly after his sudden abdication as the designated crown prince of News Corp., Lachlan Murdoch went to lunch at Da Silvano. The 33-year-old bluff and hardy publisher and News Corp. executive came in at around 1 p.m. with a group of about eight people, according to one eyewitness.

He stayed for five and a half hours.

“They started with�they all ordered Italian beers, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, the best line of Peroni,” the eyewitness said. Then came multiple bottles of Lupicaia wine, and cold cuts, truffled burrata cheese, stuffed zucchini blossoms, branzino, homemade pasta with more truffles. Lachlan Murdoch’s wife, bra and swimsuit model Sarah O’Hare, stopped by, bringing their infant son, Kalan.

By the last half hour of the meal, the bare-knuckled young publisher of the New York Post was in tears. “He was like, sort of crying on an elder gentleman at the table,” the eyewitness said. “It seemed to me like a very tender moment.”

Who could blame him?

I think that’s a rhetorical question.

Right?

I pity the fool who steps on Sony’s block and tries to lure their prized sequel hoes away with claims of ownership:

A film company wants a federal court to declare it can make a movie based on the character of “Zorro” despite objections by Sony Pictures Entertainment, the movie studio behind the 1998 film “The Mask of Zorro.” […]

In the complaint, Sobini claims that in 2000 it acquired the rights to the 1919 Johnston McCulley book “The Curse of Capistrano,” in which the swashbuckling masked avenger made his debut, and is entitled to produce “Zorro 2110,” a futuristic spin on “Zorro.”

The lawsuit comes in response to a cease-and-desist letter from Sony Pictures, asserting it owns the exclusive license to develop and distribute all films and television programs based on “Zorro,” said attorney Bruce Isaacs, who is representing Sobini.

The Sony letter has made it difficult for the Sobini production to proceed, Isaacs said.

I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that’s the purpose of a ‘cease-and-desist’.