Savino was roundly cheered for her speech on the House floor yesterday urging her colleagues to support gay marriage. It concluded, "We have nothing to fear from love and commitment."

Her colleagues did not agree! But Savino's speech is well worth watching, particularly for her skewering of the whole idea of "sanctity of marriage," which she contrasts with, you know, reality shows about women competing to marry a dwarf. So who is this ray of light from Albany's dark, homophobic sould?

• She represents District 23, which includes southern Brooklyn and the Northeastern portion of Staten Island. She is the Wu-Tang Clan's official representative!
• She is strongly pro-union!
• "Senator Savino has passed important legislation, including a law that ended the 5-year statute of limitation on sexual assualt, a bill establishing a task force for the prevention and treatment of cervical cancer, the Olive Oil Labeling Bill, which prohibits additives in virgin olive oil, the Prompt Pay Bill, which ensures prompt payment to construction contractors and their employees, a cost-of-living increase in the death benefit for widows and widowers of police officers and fire fighters killed in the line of duty." She is protecting your olive oil!
• She is prone to self-disclosure while speaking on causes personally important to her. In a speech about a recent DUI bill, she revealed that her parents were alcoholics. Brave!
• Also she wants people to be quiet on the Staten Island ferry!
• After Gov. Paterson blamed some of his problems on his race, Savino instead blamed his problems on the fact that he was blind, and does not read braille, and has aides reading him the papers and whatnot, and wasting time. That was a little insensitive!

Jasmine and Casey were besties until the latter allegedly broke into the former's apartment. There, Jasmine says, Casey masturbated in her bed, then left the used vibrator bewteen the sheets and absconded with a grand theft's worth of jewelry, clothes, and panties. Now Jasmine's speaking out about Casey's insanity—but who, you ask, is Jasmine?

• She's Trainwreck Royalty Papa was a playboy shoe magnate, Mama was a 1970s Bond girl. According to their mother, Jasmine and her sisters were named after three of their father's mistresses, "a tribute to those who didn't make it." Jasmine's parents divorced when Mom realized Dad had gambled away the family fortune, and Mom went on to fake a pregnancy and say this other lady's fiance was the daddy, which led to a nasty little lawsuit in 1995.
• 
  
• She's an Early Bloomer Jasmine started modeling at 14. By 17 she had, according to the London Evening Standard, stolen thousands of pounds from her mother to pay off menacing drug dealers, and even checked into five-star London hotels for three-day sex and drugs orgies, with bowls filled with high-grade cocaine," and once did a stint at the Priory alongside Kate Moss.
• 
  
• She's a Reality TV Villain Who Catfights Above Her Weight Class Jasmine was the "rich bitch" of Britain's Make Me a Supermodel's first season, causing supermodel host Rachel Hunter to muse aloud about wishing Lennard would get stung by a bee and die. Jasmine later got a job hosting an Make Me a Supermodel spin-off, but was fired for calling Hunter "Rachel Munter" (apparently it's a really bad word in England?) and "a fat bitch past her sell-by date who cost me winning the show" and "fat, spotty, and finished" and "I suggest she throws out the truckload of make-up she uses and hire a personal trainer."
• 
  
• She Dates Men and Women, Young and Old Paramours allegedly include Simon Cowell (while he was dating Terri Seymour), Hugh Grant, and Courtenay Semel, Casey Johnson's on-again off-again "lesbian Don Juan" heiress girlfriend, who blew the whistle on Casey's alleged crime when she recognized Jasmine's panties on Casey and sent Lennard a text message:
  

  There's a problem, Jaz, Casey Johnson just got into bed with me and she is wearing your underwear. You need to call police. There are documents here, your shoes and your clothing—you need to call the police.

  Jasmine's not gay, it's just that she is just very beautiful, and so are her friends, so sometimes it's hard to resist:

  I meet a lot of beautiful girls working in the modelling industry and I prefer to look at them rather than men, sometimes. I'm not a lesbian. ... But being with a woman is a totally different sexual experience. They're soft, with curves, boobs and sensual lips.

• She Was Friends with Casey Johnson Until Casey, Like, Fell in Love with Her Isn't it so annoying when you take a drug-addled, emotionally damaged heiress under your wing, but she totally bites the hand that's feeding her, because she is such a hungry bitch and does not have as much self control with food as I do, because, gawd, I'm awesome:
  

  Since the day I met Casey, I have only been a good force in her life. ... I tried to get her off drugs and alcohol. ... I've given her money. I am the only person who helped this girl, and I believe she was obsessed with me, and thinks in her mind we had some kind of affair.

  This time she really messed with the wrong lady. I am going to teach her a lesson

• 
  
• She Enjoys Lollipops Jasmine was in Guy Richie-directed Revolver, where she shows her panties and satiates an oral fixation in a scene interspliced with a gory shoot-out.
• 
  

After the nominal plea for privacy that will promptly be ignored by the press and the American public, Woods went on to lament the attention he's received ever since crashing his car and shaking loose a tree of secrets. All of those secrets are women, and we don't even know all their names yet. Still, Tiger is standing by his wife.

Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means. For the last week, my family and I have been hounded to expose intimate details of our personal lives. The stories in particular that physical violence played any role in the car accident were utterly false and malicious. Elin has always done more to support our family and shown more grace than anyone could possibly expect.

Screw privacy! What kind of ladies Tiger like? Skinny, leggy, conventionally attractive women with long hair. He's not so picky about the color, but he's really into the length. It helps if they have an exotic name—even if it's Grubbs. All of his confirmed mistresses worked in Vegas nightclubs, so it seems that's where Mr. Woods goes to get his holes in one—especially at The Bank, which seems to be filled with deposits from Mr. Woods' millions.

Rachel Uchitel
Lives: Manhattan
Works: Director of VIP services at the Griffin nightclub
Fun Facts: Also had relationships with Derek Jeter and David Boreanaz. Has celeb attorney Gloria Allred on retainer. Her mother is a Florida socialite.
Outed By: National Enquirer.
Hotness: A solid 8 (out of 10)
TV Movie Casting: Jennifer Aniston

Jaimee Grubbs
Lives: Las Vegas
Works: Waitress at The Bank nightclub
Fun Fact: Yes, she was on VH1's Tool Academy. Claims to have 300 "sext messages" from Woods.
Outed By: Us Weekly for a tidy sum.
Hotness: 5
TV Movie Casting: Tila Tequila

Kalika Moquin
Lives: Las Vegas
Works: Marketing director for The Bank nightclub
Fun Facts: Throws an annual Vegas Prom event, and hosted about just about every club in town. She is one of the 31 most influential people in Las Vegas nightlife
Outed By: Life & Style
Hotness: 7
TV Movie Casting: Eliza Dushku

Elin Nordegren
Lives: Wherever Tiger is—except when he's in Vegas.
Works: Retired model, now professional Mrs. Woods
Fun Facts: Gave birth to Woods' daughter Sam in 2007 and son Charlie in 2009. She is Swedish and has a twin sister, Josefin.
Outed By: Marrying Tiger in 2004 after three years of dating.
Hotness: 9
TV Movie Casting: Jamie Priessly

Four Unnamed Others
Lives: Las Vegas, Orlando, and Verona, New York
Works: One is a marketing exec, the others just want a piece of Tiger.
Fun Facts: We're waiting to find out who these women are: one he took home from his favorite pick up joint, The Bank, in Vegas. Two others he took back to his room after meeting them at a casino in Verona, New York. The fourth was a girl he was feeling up in an Orlando bar.
Outed By: Us Weekly and TMZ
Hotness: We're reserving judgement.
TV Movie Casting: There's gotta be a part for Kim Zolciak from the Real Housewives of Atlanta in there somewhere.

Durham operated companies in Indianapolis, Obsidian Enterprises and Fair Finance, that specialized in buying debt-ridden companies. The FBI did not give a reason for the raid, or for picking up Durham in LA, but the Indianapolis Business Journal has an idea:

...since Durham, 47, bought Fair in 2002, he had used it almost like a personal bank to fund a range of business interests, some of them unsuccessful... he and related parties owe Fair more than $168 million.

Oops! Let's take a look how he spent that, or whatever other, money he had! A BusinessInsider story notes that:

Durham's page on MySpace, a social networking site, revealed an R-rated pajama party in 2007. The page showed two naked women kissing and reported that Penthouse magazine model Martina Warren was in attendance.

The MySpace page is gone (although if any kind people have pictures of the gathering, send them here) but click through for a gallery and a field guide to a truly obnoxious man who boasted he sometimes forgets how many cars he owns. Or should that be owned?

Durham, who is a big Republican fundraiser, as if you couldn't tell by looking at his corpulent face, had a 100-foot yacht called Obsidian and homes in LA, Miami and Indianapolis (the big three of glamor, as they're known). Here's a picture of him and his close friend Ludacris on said yacht, courtesy of his Facebook page.

He apparently loved talking about how much money he had, because he gave interviews, and access for pictures like this, to Indianapolis Monthly ("Durham's sinewy girlfriend Jami Ferrell — a former Playboy playmate — sunbathes in the 90 degree heat") and CNBC in 2008 before everyone was revealed to be broke. Highlights from the latter next.

From CNBC: "Durham's main residence is a 30,000 square foot, 8 bedroom home in Indiana. The house has a pool, 2 state of the art kitchens, 3 bars, an exercise room, home theater and about 20 TV's — including 2 in the master bathroom's mirror."

From CNBC: "Tim Durham has a major weakness for cars. On any given day he can drive off in a Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, or Dusenberg. Durham owns almost 70 cars...but sometimes loses count."

From CNBC: "In the past the wealthy had private railroad cars....today they have jets. Tim Durham frequently uses his private jet to go where ever he'd like, even on very short notice. Durham says "it's a nice convenience to have."

And here are some more pictures from his Facebook account. This one is provisionally titled: 'leering mouth-breather.'

This is the lady his Facebook account says he's 'in a relationship' with. Obviously we know nothing about these people and they may be deeply in love. But the odds on her visiting him in jail, should he be charged and prosecuted with anything, seem slim judging by the company he keeps.

The AdMob deal announced today is the third largest acquisition in Google's history, behind only DoubleClick ($3.1 billion) and YouTube ($1.7 billion). But no one's really been talking about the mobile advertising network or its early-thirtysomething founder Omar Hamoui until now. Hamoui is downright anonymous.

Here's what we've learned about him based on his low internet profile and scant press clippings:

• Has all of 441 followers on Twitter. In contrast, Jason Calacanis, who sold his weblogging company for less than 1/20th as much, has 77,000 followers.
  
• 32 years old as of May.
  
• Earned a bachelor's in computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles and dropped out of the MBA program at Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
  
• Ran computer programming company Vertical Blue for almost four years.
  
• Senior program manager at Sony Pictures Digital, about two years.
  
• COO of startup called GoPix.
  
• Started HerBabyShower.com.
  
• Started FotoChatter, for sharing pictures between cell phones, but left the venture behind after becoming frustrated with the inefficiency of advertising his site to mobile users.
  
• Came up with AdMob as a solution to the FotoChatter advertising headaches while at Wharton, at age 28.
  
• In 2007, Bill Gates personally asked Omar Hamoui to speak at Microsoft's annual gathering of journalists, according to a July 207 Ad Age article. Gates had just bought one of Hamoui's competitors.
  
• Last year, toured Kara Swisher of All Things D through his cramped headquarters in San Mateo, a town on the San Francisco Peninsula not exactly famous as a startup hotbed. (See below).
  
• Google bought AdMob after attempting to launch a mobile ad network of its own (AdSense Mobile).

(Pic: Hamoui by Rodrigo SEPÚLVEDA SCHULZ )

Scientology has a long history of spastic, sweaty spokespersons with creepy laughs who eventually crack under the pressure and leave the organization. There was Robert Vaughn Young, who publicly renounced the church in 1989 after decades in its leadership. He was followed by Mike Rinder, an unhinged Australian bulldog who decided to stop lying for church leader David Miscavige last year and spoke out publicly about the cult's bizarre and arbitrary cruelty in June.

The latest inheritor of Young and Rinder's mantle as the unsettling public face of scientology is Tommy Davis, the head of the cult's Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles. Davis lived up to the role last week by walking out on ABC News's Martin Bashir during a Nightline interview after Bashir asked him about Xenu, the intergalactic warlord that Hubbard believed is responsible for saddling us all with a bunch of crazy body thetans.

So who is this guy, and how long before he cracks up and turns against the church like all the rest?

• He's a Hollywood scion.
  Davis, 37, is the son of actress Anne Archer and Jeffrey Davis, a real estate investor. According to Rolling Stone's Janet Reitman, Davis "freely admits to being a Hollywood rich kid. He dresses in Italian suits, drives a BMW and is addicted to his Blackberry. 'I have enough money to never work a day in my life,' he says."
• He's Tom Cruise's BFF.
  According to the Daily Beast's Kim Masters, Davis spent nearly a decade as Cruise's "personal, full-time, assigned Scientology handler." Claire Headley, a former Scientologist who left the cult five years ago, tells Masters: "'He filtered everything, reported on what [Cruise] was doing to [Church of Scientology leader] David Miscavige.' Officially, Davis was assigned to the church's president's office in the Celebrity Centre, she continues, but he was essentially with Cruise full-time from the late 1990s until 2005." Davis worked intimately with Miscavige on the deeply strange Tom Cruise tribute video that was leaked to Gawker last year.
• He goes for stunts.
  When the BBC's John Sweeney decided to make a documentary about Scientology two years ago for Panorama, Davis and his then-colleague Rinder decided to make a "counter-documentary," and succeeded in goading Sweeney into an angry outburst that they caught on camera and distributed widely in order to discredit him. Davis harangued Sweeney mercilessly in the middle of Scientology's graphic "Psychiatry: Industry of Death" exhibit, and Sweeney later said of his enraged response: "I felt they were trying to control my mind." In the course of the same documentary, Davis walked out of an interview after Sweeney called Scientology a "sinister cult." After walking out on Bashir last week, Davis reportedly showed up unannounced at ABC News headquarters less than an hour before Nightline's airtime and demanded that the piece be spiked. He was rebuffed.
• He probably doesn't know what he's talking about.
  While Davis has said in the past that he is "familiar with" the "confidential scriptures" of Scientology that tell the story of Xenu, he's also told CNN's John Roberts that talk of "space parasites" is "unrecognizable to me." Discussions of Xenu are strictly verboten among Scientologists who haven't yet reached, and paid for, the OT-III—or Operating Thetan, level three—step on the cult's "bridge to total freedom," during which Xenu's exploits are revealed. Members are told that if they hear about Xenu before their minds are properly prepared, it will make them retarded, insane, or even kill them. Masters speculates that Davis' dumbfounded reaction to Bashir's question may have been genuine:

  Headley suspects Tommy Davis has never participated in upper-level training in which the story of Xenu would have actually been revealed. She thinks that may be why he walked out of the Nightline interview when asked about it. "In Scientology, no one can talk about it, whether you've done it or not," she says. "If you talk about it when you're not up to that level, you can be banned from ever doing it."

  Davis wouldn't tell her whether he'd reached OT-III, but according to a partial database of Scientology course completions gleaned from announcements in church publications, he hasn't.

• He's a "drug revert" and all around troublemaker.
  Masters says Davis has a reputation for mischief. He was a "happy-go-lucky" teen who was caught smoking pot, which makes him in church parlance a "drug revert" and should have barred him from serving in the cult's leadership. Davis denies being a revert. But he has, according to Masters, gotten into more recent trouble with his superiors. After the BBC flap, Masters says, he briefly "blew" from the Sea Org and went AWOL, an infraction that earned him a stint cleaning toilets in the church's Clearwater, Fla., international headquarters—though Masters doesn't use the term, it certainly sounds like Davis was shunted off to the "Rehabilitation Project Force," the church's punitive gulag for staff members who fall out of line. Davis' former friend, ex-Scientologist Jason Beghe, told the Village Voice last year that he could see from the look on Davis' face during a CNN interview that he'd been RFP'd.
• He probably won't last long.
  Davis hasn't been doing a great job. The Nightline interview was another in a string of embarrassments for the church, and Paul Haggis' high-profile defection over the weekend—announced in an open letter to Davis—is likely not sitting well with Miscavige. Davis' job is to "handle" anyone who would do harm to the church's reputation, and his tenure thus far has been marked by a string of pile-ups—angry confrontations; Haggis' defection; John Travolta's acknowledgment that, contrary to church dogma, autism is real; the St. Petersburg Times' devastating series detailing the revelations of high-profile defectors about Miscavige's violent and insane regime. He also has personal relationships with people who've left the church—he worked with Rinder, and was close friends with Beghe—and has left the reservation before. How much abuse and lying can he take before he follows them out the door?

• She Loves Models: "My name is Min Lieskovsky, I'm 26, and I'm addicted to male models. I've dated six of the world's top models, as ranked by Models.com," she wrote in Elle Girl. Perhaps her tastes have, ah, changed, a bit? "My secret to dating male models is simple: Tell them they're smart," she writes. Or, date a smart guy, and tell him he's attractive!
• She Is Quite a Hottie, if She Does Say So Herself: Let's pull more from that same Elle Girl story, which is truly a unique window into the psyche of Min Lieskovsky. "Each male model I dated told me he had never met a girl like me: smart, but easy to talk to; nerdy, but still pretty hot." Interesting. Are you in fact pretty hot? "I have long harbored fantasies of being a model," she says, but goes on to clarify, with admirable humility, "At 5'6" and 130 pounds, I consider myself quite a fox, but I'm not model material." Actually, she could have been a model if she weren't such a rebel: "the popular boys in my school who ranked hot girls said they'd have put me at No. 1 if I hadn't shaved my head or worn lederhosen."
• She Went to School, You Know, In Boston: "And while, with a Harvard diploma, I had entrée to a career of my choice, there was something very attractive about the idea of achieving fame with very little effort." Her thesis was about Cambodian genocide: "I'm really interested in human capabilities, which is why I'm interested in poetry, music, stuff like that. Genocide is just another one of those human capabilities, it's how you basically live death."
• She's Finally Listening to Her Mother: "Then I remember that men display identical tastes to mine, preferences that tend toward the young and professionally pulchritudinous. Women my mother's age have told me to find a man who would be a good father and provider, meaning: food, shelter, a steady income-stability. I smile and refrain from telling them that I can afford my own food and rent and that my friends and family give me support and love. About the only thing that I can't give myself is that flush of excitement upon locking eyes (and lips) with a really gorgeous guy." Uh huh.
• She Apparently Made Up Her Own Job Title: According to LinkedIn, Min is a "Writing and Ethnographic Marketing Consultant." Uh huh.
• She Enjoys Traveling: She went to Cambodia once with her writer friend! She had a good time. And took pictures. And that's just the beginning: "Lieskovsky's wanderings have taken her across Europe and to a number of South American countries. Along the way, she has partied at the American embassy in Cambodia, bluffed her way into a maximum security prison and learned bank-robbing tips from Long Beach Crips exiled in Cambodia. Lieskovsky isn't anywhere near done. 'I want to go to as many dangerous places as possible,' she says."
• She Has Goals: "'I want to be Angelina Jolie's assistant in Cambodia,' she exclaims."
• Her Friends Love Her: "'I can't think of anything that make her anything like other people. I don't know if she has any human traits really,' says blockmate Jennifer L. Nelson '03."

And there's more: The Facebook Flirting Salman Rushdie Used to Win Min Lieskovsky's Heart

[Pics: Myspace, Friendster]

Raj Rajaratnam is the co-founder of the hedge fund Galleon Group. Last Friday, he was arrested and charged with the biggest insider trading scheme that Wall Street has seen in recent history. Let's briefly recap this spectacular criminal web!

• The SEC says that Rajaratnam used a vast web of inside informants at various companies to trade on them illegally using inside information. He and five others have been charged in this case, including two from another hedge fund and one IBM executive. Rajaratnam allegedly paid cash and favors to insiders in return for information, and made more than $20 million in profit on the ensuing trades.
• Rajaratnam himself (who claims he's innocent) is a Sri Lankan native who's been a fundraiser for causes there (including, allegedly, the Tamil Tigers, who are designated as terrorists by the US government). He's also the largest individual investor in Sri Lanka, and stocks there fell on the news of the charges.
• This is the largest insider trading case ever connected to a hedge fund. That makes the publicity-and-regulation-averse hedge fund world nervous. However, at least three former Rajaratnam colleagues are helping the government build its case against him.
• Incriminating telephone transcripts? This case has 'em! The best are tapes of Danielle Chiesi of New Castle Funds (pictured), also charged with insider trading in the case. She sounded less than innocent:
  
  
  
  
• Robert Moffat, a top IBM exec, was also arrested in the case, for leaking inside info. His arrest reportedly caused "cheering in the halls" by unionized workers.
• Anyhow, Rajaratnam's out on $100 million bail and he's supposed to be addressing Galleon employees in the office today, so be sure to email us and let us know what he says!

Not merely Julia Allison come the Valley, but a Jullia Allison only the Valley could breed; a fameball selling California's tech-money nexus on the notion it can turn its business ethos into a spiritual conscience. For attention-hungry Zuckerberg, the mildly political video above is just another in a series of high-profile lip dubs; for venture capitalist Tim Draper, another chance to clown. Kataoka, though, describes herself as a "Silicon Valley artist," and seems determined in certain scenes to elevate the clip into something of a performance piece.

Art and spirituality are, in fact, key to how Kataoka sells herself in the Valley. She is, on the most basic level, a blogger and Web entrepreneur, like virtually everyone else in the California tech enclave. Kataoka even attempted to hit her wedding guests up for free venture capital. But her ValleyZen blog offers big shots something special: the rare chance to blather on about their inner philosophy and intricate belief systems.

They leap at the chance. In one of four videos, Draper hugs and dances with Kataoka; book publisher Tim O'Reilly gives her a tour of his treehouse at home in Sebastopol; TV host Charlie Rose and Tesla CEO Elon Musk consent to backstage interviews.

The archetype for a ValleyZen sit-down is the one Kataoka did with her partner in the venture, uber attorney Bill Fenwick, who counts Apple Inc. among his clients.

Fenwick pitches Zen Buddhism as excellent preparation for corporate battle. With militaristic East Asian music in the background, he says:

There is an awful lot of similarity between the principles of Zen and what happens in a battle... If you can get enough people... to find commonality, you've got a force that's going to have to be reckoned with.

Kataoka also touts the practical benefits of Zen for venture capitalists:

It's a composure, a poised kind of calm that would allow to innovate and create and think of new ideas.

Innovation is not exactly a traditional religious selling point. But the dubious repurposing of Eastern religions into corporate strategy is hardly new, either; like Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie Wall Street, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has taken to using Sun Tzu's Art of War as a tactical business manual.

Kataoka is the perfect icon for this sort of awkward fusion. In a region overloaded with computer scientists and MBAs — men obsessed with numbers and code — there's something deliciously off-kilter about a "classical and jazz flutist" who claims "Japanese Samurai heritage" and specializes in a "2000 year-old art form of Japanese brush painting." She's drawn cover artwork for Wynton Marsalis, completed a commissioned portrait of 49ers Coach Bill Walsh and done extensive work for Stanford University. In fact, according to a student who attended the college in the late 1990s, her work became comically ubiquitous:

She... somehow managed to wrangle some deal doing art for the vast majority of official Stanford posters. So... every time you'd get a flyer for like homecoming or something, it'd look as though you were being invited to formal tea in Kyoto. It was weird.

Kataoka has drawn approving notices for her fashion choices. A pre-election encounter between the artist and Michelle Obama led the Fashion-y Blog to assemble the collage at left, adding,

"Drue does a really good job balancing funky and classic pieces. Her signature sleek '20s-style bob, bright red lipstick, and matching nail polish always make a statement, and she clearly isn't afraid to stand out."

Brush strokes, music, fashion, Zen: Everyone in Silicon Valley wishes they were this eclectic. The Bay Area man is supposed to be a renaissance man; it is not enough to be merely a venture capitalist or a programmer or a journalist, one should also be a rock-climbing, spiritually involved yoga instructor with a quirky electronic pop band on the side. Hence the local obsession with the annual hippie drug and art fest that is Burning Man.

If you feel like something of a let down in this regard, well, why not look to Kataoka and ValleyZen? In New York, where attention is worshipped via the media industry, those feeling insufficiently self promotional can look to the high priestess of fameballing, Julia Allison. In the Valley, where long hours coding or selling so often conflict with the eclectic ideal, Kataoka sells instead a facade of well-roundedness, with Pacific Century Asian flare to boot. And, soothing music and talk of Zen aside, she does so just as aggressively as her East Coast counterpart.

[top video via VentureBeat]

The National Healthy Marriage Resource Center, a "clearinghouse" spawn of the Department of Health and Human Services, earlier this year launched the Twoofus.org, a multimedia campaign it hopes will spark "a national conversation about marriage among 18-30 year-olds" and "increase confidence that marriage is a viable option." Sounds sexy.

So, how can you survive the "daunting" dating game and tie yourself down? Here are some things to remember...

Friday, October 16

"Paired readings" with New Yorker writers. It has a wine-snob connotation that will go over well! At 7, try Daniyal Mueenuddin and Salman Rushdie. At 9:30, Jonathan Lethem and Colson Whitehead. Count the stereotypical Brooklyn writer types in the crowd and report back to us!

Or better yet, skip both those things and go see Roger Angell, Adam Gopnik, Ariel Levy, Mark Singer, and Judith Thurman standing up on a stage and telling "stories about life at the magazine." Narcissistically alluring! I hope Roger Angell tells the one about when an argument over the literary merits of baseball vs. boxing led him into a fistfight with AJ Liebling, after which Angell ended up in the hospital with irreversible brain damage. Or did we just make that up? Show up and find out!

Saturday, October 16

At 10 a.m., Ariel Levy interviews Rachel Maddow. That is brutally early, so it better be good and full of bawdy discussion of lesbianism. Also at 10: A panel featuring our favorite human calculator Nate Silver, and another one about advertising featuring Steve Stoute. If you guys got together I bet you could make some money.

At 1 p.m., Malcolm Gladwell gives a talk on "The Curious Case of Michael Vick." In fact there was nothing curious about his case at all. Sounds unbearable(-ly intriguing! Send us a report of the five biggest Gladwellian leaps of credulity.)

At 4, an interview of Tyler Perry. How does he come up with so many similar characters? Ask him!

Go have dinner, then at 10 p.m. the theater nerds can go see Tilda Swinton talk to Hilton Als, and the music nerds can go see Steve Earle, and the real music nerds can just follow Sasha Frere-Jones from event to event all day, glancing at him bashfully from beneath their iPods.

Sunday, October 17

Foodies can walk around with Calvin Trillin and eat dim sum. Highbrow alcoholics go drink beer at noon with Burkhard Bilger who btw picks like the best story topics of anyone. There's a whole slew of New Yorker writers talking about themselves and their work. Take your pick. (I bet they love this shit. Can we get a festival, over here? Unfair and classist.)

Noon: Photography with Platon. Fashiony!

At 4 p.m. they close things out with "Shouts & Murmurs Live," featuring Woody Allen, Simon Rich, George Saunders, and a host of other people who—we're guessing—are funny writers but are not, in fact, master stand-up comedians. Skip this and go see whatever's happening at Upright Citizens Brigade. It costs like five bucks and will probably be funnier.

Hope you didn't read all the way to the end of this and miss your chance to buy tickets. That would suck.

The Basics

Yale grad student Annie Le entered a school lab building on Sept. 8 (pictured) and was never seen alive again. She was asphyxiated and her body was hidden in the crawl space behind a wall. Clark worked as an animal tech in the Animal Research Center there. [The lab has been a target of PETA in the past, and it could prove consequential in the case; Clark was found with scratches on his body that he's blaming on the animals he worked with, rather than being from a fighting Le.] Based on 700 hours of surveillance footage, police named him a "Person of Interest." They executed a search warrant on his apartment last night, took DNA from him, and released him. He has not been charged.

One lesson in all this: You could theoretically be totally innocent of a crime, but still find everything you posted online end up in the tabloids. So think before you go too crazy on the internet.

Ray Clark's Digital Trail

Ray had a barely-filled-in Myspace page that he hadn't accessed since 2006. It looks like he just used it for a momentary joke, although he probably now regrets writing that he wants to meet "your mom so I can fuck her." His girlfriend, Jennifer Hromadka, also had a Myspace page, though it's been deleted.

The couple also had a wedding page on The Knot that's been hidden. But according to Hunter Walker, who glimpsed much of Ray Clark's online info before it was pulled, it "says that the couple planned to get married on December 20, 2011 and that they have been engaged since New Year's Day 2008.

The E-Mail Trail [NYDN]

Investigators reportedly zeroed in on Clark in part because of emails he sent to Le.

In the e-mails, Clark is said to criticize Le for not adhering to the protocols for tending the mice kept in the basement as part of her lab's ongoing experiments.
Le is said to have responded in a conciliatory tone, promising to keep to the protocols. Investigators wonder if Clark was not satisfied, if resentment suddenly flared to rage, if as crazy as it may seem this was a case of mice and murder.

His Family's Explanation [NYP]

"He did not pass the polygraph test . . . But of course, they don't always run true anyway, especially when you're nerved up asking so many questions," the sympathetic [family] source insisted.
As for Clark's fresh wounds, "He had scratches on his arm from his cat," the person said.
The source said Clark, whom the family calls "Ray Ray," works at the lab along with his fiancée, sister and her husband.
"But he didn't really know [Le]," the source said.
"She left the area before he left that morning. He'd seen her and said, 'Hi' and kept on going."

Cheating Rumors [NYP]

Ray's fiancee Jennifer Hromadka took to a blog to deny unspecified rumors that Ray was cheating on her.

"My boyfriend, Ray, if you don't know him, has no interest in any of the other girls at [the university research center] as anything more than friends.
"This rumor of a 'fling' is probably the most stupid thing i have ever heard and really is not even worth going into detail about.

What The Neighbors Say [NYDN]

"It definitely freaks me out," said Ivan Hernandez, 22, who lives directly above Clark. "A possible murderer living right under you, that's crazy. I thought he was just a normal guy."
One of Clark's former neighbors in New Haven said he screamed at children and was "very controlling" of his girlfriend.
"Ray was very controlling of his girlfriend," said Anne Marie Goodwin, 40. "He would never let her talk to anyone. I would hear a lot of yelling upstairs."
Clark - a 2004 graduate of Branford High School, who mostly worked with rodents at Yale - "kept a pit bull caged in his apartment," Goodwin said.

1. Be a Book Publicist—It worked for Melissa Broder, Sloane Crosley's publicist. Extend this chain ad infinitum. Crosley's book was called "I Was Told There'd Be Cake," and Broder's book will be called "When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother." The titles grow more impenetrably twee with each generation. Broder's publicist's future book will be called "Banana Karenina Sings the Blueberries, Or: The Indubitably Odd Presidency of Cherry True-Man."


2. Tumblr—Hey hey, Tumblr-of-the-minute Shit My Dad Says is the latest hot literary property! The hottest since This is Why You're Fat. Or Look at This Fucking Hipster. Even that Twitter book, which is almost like Tumblr or whatever, (internet buzzwords here). The point is: If you want a book off your internet crap, get it before the meme collapses.


3. Be a Celebrity—No matter how bad the economy gets, America will never tire of reading about celebrities and who they fuck. Which reminds us...


4. Fuck a Celebrity—Writing about Bernie Madoff's penis size will get you lots of press, but it might obviate the public's need to actually buy the book. Beware.


5. Latch Onto a Huge News Story and Ride It Straight to Book Hell—It must seem like common sense to hand out all those fat six-figure book contracts for books about The Historic Financial Crisis of 2008 or The Historic Election of 2008 while those things are happening. Then the book comes out a year later and nobody cares any more, plus **everything** has already been said. Be sure to get a good advance on a book deal like this. It's all you're gonna get.


6. Puppies—Quiz: You're a high-ranking editor at one of America's most prestigious news outlets. How will you get yourself a book deal. Answer: Write a column about your puppy! "Write a column about your puppy" is always a good answer to most of the aspiring author's daunting questions about the publishing industry. Motherfuckers just love puppies.

[Crosley/ Broder pic: Ron Hogan]

Age: Today is his 40th birthday. Congrats!

Residence: West Village.

Childhood: Raised in San Antonio, Texas.

Education: B.A. in history from Princeton.

Occupation: Co-founder and executive director of Friends of the High Line, the group that saved the abandoned railroad trestle in west Chelsea and turned it into the hippest public park in the city. It opened in June. Hammond started the group with business partner Joshua David (pictured with Hammond above) in 1999 when the two meet at a community board meeting when they both showed up to protest the landmark's demolition. Before his work with the park, he consulted with start-ups to help them raise money and design websites.

Compensation: He has made $1.2 million over the past decade working on the High Line. He currently pulls in $250,000 a year.

Famous Friends:

• Ed Norton
• Diane von Furstenberg
• Barry Diller
• Kevin Bacon
• Kyra Sedgewick

Interests: Hammond is a painter who had shows in 2006 and 2008 (pictured here). He is not interested in the spotlight. Even personal profiles of Hammond tend to loop back to his work with the conservancy.

Click to enlarge it, why don't you?

Big shout out to non-racist Gawker image wizard Steven Dressler for the chart.

• Don't Deserve to Be Kidnapped: Being arrested for trying to smuggle heroin out of Thailand, for example, will not make you as sympathetic a figure as being kidnapped by extremists in pursuit of truth.
• Make Your Rescue as Dramatic as Possible: David Rohde actually escaped, from a Taliban prison! Ling and Lee were rescued by "Big" Bill Clinton, on an airplane! These are the types of high-profile rescues that make for exciting news stories. Being turned over quietly to a low-level embassy employee after quiet negotiations does little to get your name in the headlines. To the extent you can, keep your situation dramatically charged. If necessary, act as a double agent to make sure the whole thing doesn't go too smoothly.
• Pray For a Slow News Cycle: Ling and Lee were front page news for days—mostly because they had the good fortune to be rescued in the midst of the hot, boring, summer, when reporters will drag out any semi-respectable story as long as possible to fill the gaping news hole. Compare their fate to that of Ezterhas Rocococo, the E! journalist freed by the Tamil Tigers after seven years imprisonment. Why haven't you heard much about his story? Because he was set free on September 11, 2001. And because we made him up.
• Practice Your Humble Homecoming: You can't come back like some raving lunatic who went crazy on the inside. You also can't come back like some huge asshole always being the guy at the reporters' bar saying "Yea that Bloomberg press conference sounds crazy, reminds me of when I was eating bugs with an AK two inches from my ear in a bamboo cage, back in '06." You have to fake being humble. "I just want to get back to work," etc. Patently false, but still.
• Book, TV, Movie: That's the order. The book deal gets you the TV promos and then—hopefully—the movie. So write your book with Angelina Jolie's tastes in mind.
• Get the Fuck Outta Journalism: This is the endgame. What did you think it was? Pulitzer? Do you know how much a Pulitzer pays? Not much, my friend. You have to ride this kidnapping thing all the way up the ladder. Think about it: "From Helpless to Hollywood: My Journey From an Al Quaeda Prison Cell to Hollywood Squares." The next book writes itself.

Michael Bloomberg: The guy who will win.

Tony Avella: The guy who will lose the Democratic nomination.

Bill Thompson: The guy who will win the Democratic nomination, then lose.

Robert Burck, The Naked Cowboy: Now we're talking! A real live fakey fake candidate! He stands out in Times Square impressing tourists for sure! He is a neat freak who lives in Secaucus! For these and other reasons people who actually live in New York City despise him as a symbol of the city's Disneyfication and he will surely do terribly, even by joke vanity candidate standards.

Reverend Billy Talen: Reverend Billy! You have surely seen him leading a choir of anti-consumerists in Union Square or taking over your local Starbucks, with preaching. He is now running on the ticket of the Green Party, which, in some counties out West, is considered a borderline real political party! He will garner the meager urban hippie vote.

Frances Villar: Candidate from the Party for Socialism and Liberation. "The Billionaires are not our friends!" she exhorts. Correct. Not your friend, especially, as it is a billionaire who will handily defeat you in the mayoral election. She will finish in the top 4 in the lesbian vote.

Jimmy McMillan: Candidate of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, or, as Jimmy puts it conversationally, the Rent Too Damn High Party. He has an AOL email address and a MySpace page. Could threaten late.

What Will Happen?

We got some fascinating insight into the McKinsey corporate bulldozer process, from people who have experienced it firsthand. First, look for your chance to put your thumb on the consulting scale: "The McKinsey team and the management team will usually form a joint working group. That working group will often have several lower level people from the client working on it to gather facts, run analyses, and so forth. Get on that team. At least you'll see what's coming, and at best you might influence it."

But don't expect to feel too important: "The big firms don't bother interviewing individual employees (a la the Bobs in Office Space) - they'll gut entire departments that they deem strategically insignificant or issue edicts like 'cut out 50% of management at this level.' The actual firing is all done by the client firm's management (McK would never get their hands dirty that way)." Another vet confirms: "McKinsey doesn't give a shit, they are not interested in you. They want to get rid of entire divisions, not individuals."

What Can You Do?

Be Nice to the Consultants—It does not pay to be an asshole, unfortunately. One tipster advises you to "cooperate with the consultants (they always report back to senior management)." Another survivor says, " If interviewed by a McKenzie, answer everything question nicely. If you hold back, or are snotty, they fire your ass. Threee of my former collegues tried the stonewall approach and got canned."

Suck Up—Kiss ass, Kiss ass, Kiss ass. "Suck up to your own superiors, and their superiors, and theirs." It's just that simple. A brown nose could give you a minute edge on your fellow layoff-eligibles.

Practice Subtle Backstabbing—You don't want to be seen as a desperate bastard ready to sell out any and all of your colleagues to save your own job (even though you are). You just want to plant the seed. Take it from someone who's been there: " Don't talk shit about individuals, talk shit about DIVISIONS in a passive-aggressive way. Saying things like: 'Those fellows that work in [blank] division are really nice guys, but I've worked here for five years and I still don't know what they do' is a winner." Corporate espionage at its finest, ladies and gentlemen.

Watch Office Space—Several of you sent this tip. Har har. This will only have value if you can bribe a McKinseyite with, like, a hijacked truck full of Office Space DVDs.

Slut It Up—"If all else fails: Find out who the senior partner at McKinsey is, and fuck them." This is experience speaking, people.

Despair—You may find it strangely comforting to accept the fact that—even if you employ all of these countermeasures—you may still get fucked by McKinsey, and not just by the partner you fucked on purpose. "As a consultant for [firm] who's worked on several optimization cases, I wish the Conde Nasters luck. That being said, there's little they can do personally to avoid the axe," says one tipster. He should know! Need more proof? This comes from a former McKinsey consultant: "it's a good idea to release any sense of control you might have over your future. Being nice, being useful, and doing a great job all have nothing do with it - they will be deciding what the company should be doing, not making HR-type decisions about who's good at their job. If you work in a function that they decide doesn't need doing, it doesn't matter how nice/useful/great-at-your-job you are - that function will be eliminated."

Your job: Enjoy it while it lasts.

Go to any function where advertising "creatives" gather, and you will see that guy: the one wearing some old Converse, or crazy purple-yellow-red-green Adidas he designed himself, online. The average old person would not think such a cool guy could be such a corporate hack, but they would be wrong! We're not here to give you list of facts about Alex Bogusky's career (he's the chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the supercool ad agency that brought you the weird Burger King ads, Microsoft's current ad campaign, and many others—basically the EDGY agency that's not too edgy for corporate behemoths)—we're just here to demonstrate to you that, yes, Alex Bogusky is that ad guy. Okay:

• "You get a sense of Alex Bogusky's droll perspective when he hands you his business card. It has one rounded corner and reads, '25% safer than most other business cards.'"
• "'Conventional branding tends to piggyback on pop culture,' says Bogusky, 41, whose sneakers and long mane befit the college-dorm ambiance of CP&B's Coconut Grove offices."
• "'He looked like Jesus,' confesses a blushing 27-year-old hipster in gray New Balance sneakers and a zip-up hoodie."
• 
  The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
• "Bogusky works on a raised platform in Crispin's 70,000-square-foot space, which once housed an indoor soccer field."
• "As a rule we get off more on the culture jamming aspect of what we do for clients than the actual advertising aspects."
• He wrote a dieting book. God.