Try $140.7 million on for size. Let that sink into your neck and suck your will to live and/or be any other movie.

[New Moon is] the third biggest three-day debut ever, according to early estimates from Hollywood.com Box Office. ("The Dark Knight" still retains the record for the biggest weekend debut with $158.4 million, and "Spider-Man 3" is second with $151.1 million.)

Good to know: Bats > Spiders > Sparkly Vampires.

80% of Twlight: New Moon's audience, according to the same report, were women. The other 20% breaks down like this:

10%: Pissed-Off Boyfriends
6%: Vampire Fetishists
3%: Overprotective Fathers
1%: Pissed-Off Gays

Sadly, the nu-vampire trend shows no signs of dying out any time soon. Twilight's basically trying to take over pop culture entirely, and pop culture is losing the war against Twilight. They even signed up hipster culture to be a part of this thing with indie rock bands on the soundtrack. These people are good: lure in early-adopters with crossover music that they're in the closet about enjoying (read: Death Cab for Cutie), and get them to "ironically" enjoy going to see Twilight movies until puff-paint shirts of Bella and Edward start appearing in Urban Outfitters everywhere. Genius.

So: what comes after the sparkly vampires in this weekend's box office take? $100M? $75M? $50M? Nope. But at least it involved a Vanity Fair writer.

Sandra Bullock continued her stellar year, with her true-life sports drama "The Blind Side" clearing an estimated $34.5 million for second place.

Michael Lewis! Attaboy! You took a, uh, nibble out of the sparkly vampires with the high fructose-sweetened version of what was pretty good source material. Now all we need to do is get Michael Lewis to write a screenplay about how vampires could be more profitable if they just cut the Mormon abstinence bullshit and got straight to Rated R-type bloodsucking (read: sex, gratuitous violence) while recruiting for their ranks cheaper vampires who'll suck more blood over the long run, and we've got a competitor. I've even got a great title in mind: Bloodsucking Blind Moneyballs. And it can star this guy:

Now: The Blind Side is a book that's primarily about the evolution of football strategy and the players recruited to execute it. The book has a sub-story: not so much a sub-plot, because it's so patently different — but well weaved into — the book's core. It's about a rags-to-riches college football prospect who goes from being impoverished to being taken in by a rich family. Which is basically the entire conciet of The O.C..

So: why this?

There are so, so many ways to make a great movie out of this book that walks the line between emotional and cerebral, between a rabble-rousing sports film and a heady one. A few examples: Remember The Titans, Hoosiers, Field Of Dreams, A League of Their Own, Bull Durham. They could've made the good version of Blue Chips, or the uplifting version of Hoop Dreams. Instead, it looks like they turned a bestselling Michael Lewis book into an after-school special, produced by and starring Sandra Bullock.

Fox optioned Blind Side following an excerpt The New York Times Magazine published preceding the book's 2006 release. Back then, Gawker managing editor Gabriel Snyder, writing for Variety, reported on the "intense bidding war" over the property. A look back in history shows that Lewis probably expected something like this to happen to his book:

While many of Lewis' books have been optioned through the years — Warner Bros. owns rights to his breakthrough Wall Street trader yarn "Liars' Poker" but it is not in active development — none of them have reached production. Columbia is still developing an adaptation of "Moneyball" with Mike De Luca producing.

But Lewis said his hopes are higher with "Blind Side."

"The main through-story is the collision between this destitute 16-year-old black kid and this evangelical rich white couple," he said. "Of all the books I've written, this is by far the most likely to be made into a movie."

Well, we know what happened to Moneyball, Liar's Poker's nowhere to be seen, and then there's this. Not that Lewis would have a problem with it: if the film does well, his books (and the options to them) will go for even more, and he might even be able to jack up his quote for The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair contracts for more money than he's already getting.

If Michael Lewis didn't have any involvement with this movie — and really, does it look like he did? — he's got this racket far more figured out than some of his more uppity book writing contemporaries: leave it to Hollywood to do whatever they want to the book. The worse the adaptation, the more commercial (and thus: bankable) it'll probably be. Besides: books are always better than the movie, anyway. Why lose out on any cash?

Come to think of it, there's probably a Michael Lewis book somewhere in that line of thought.

First, let's briefly recap what we and others have reported so far: The film was set to begin shooting last week. Five days before the start of shooting, director Steven Soderbergh turned in a rewrite of the original script, which was written by Steven Zaillian, that Sony executives, led by co-Chairman Amy Pascal, did not like. The studio felt that Soderbergh, who was insistent that every event in the film had to have taken place in real life, was taking the film in an "artsy" direction that they weren't willing to gamble $58-million dollars on, so they killed it. That's the short version of events according to Amy Pascal anyway.

Since then a few more details about the project emerged. Movieline and Deadspin provided some new information in reports of their own, and today the New York Times has an article that sheds some light on Soderbergh's zeal for authenticity.

One reason was to win the approval of Major League Baseball, which was not happy with some factual liberties in Mr. Zaillian's version. Such approval is crucial in a baseball film that intends to use protected trademarks.

"Typically, on a film like this, we look at it for historical accuracy," said Matthew Bourne, a vice president of Major League Baseball for public relations. "We've been in touch with Soderbergh and Sony, and they've been receptive to our requests."

What baseball saw as accurate, Sony executives saw as being too much a documentary.

All of this brings us to the information provided to us by a tipster who'd been working on the project and has a decidedly different point of view than that of Amy Pascal and Sony.

First and foremost, Soderbergh had been upfront with the direction in which he intended to take the film from the very beginning of his employment. In fact, it was clear to all of us - whether in the Art Department or the Costumes Department, etc. – that Soderbergh intended to use real people to play themselves in the creation of the true story of Moneyball. Additionally, for months Soderbergh had been shooting interviews with real ball players and people from Billy Beane's past, and the studio approved these shoots. How could the studio then at the eleventh hour claim that his approach was a surprise to them? He intended to tell the true story rather than a fictitious version of the story. How innovative.

What exactly is wrong with making a movie accurate? And since when does an authentic film translate as an "art" film? I know numerous people that thought that Soderbergh's approach sounded insightful and interesting and true to the game and what really happened. If baseball lovers and non-baseball lovers alike in my large social network felt this way (not to mention the hundreds of bloggers that were fans of the concept), why couldn't this approach have universal appeal?

Regarding the notion that Sony executives were shocked to discover the direction Soderbergh planned on taking the film:

Soderbergh's script dated June 17, 2009 was not the first script that he handed in to Sony. On June 7th, Soderbergh submitted a draft to the studio with the following note on the first page:

"NOTE: Scenes involving Billy Beane's minor and major league career have been removed from this draft. They will be determined by filmed interviews with scouts, coaches, managers, players and family members who were with him at the time."

Sony executives read this draft. And Sony executives gave Soderbergh their notes. Clearly Amy Pascal did not read this draft – if she had, maybe the drama that began with the June 17th draft could have been avoided.

Another fact: Soderbergh handed in yet another draft dated June 10, 2009 with this note on the first page:

"NOTE: Billy Beane's minor and major league career will be shown via filmed interviews with scouts, coaches, managers, players and family members who were with him at the time. These interviews will comprise approximately ten percent of the film.

"Another ten percent of the film will consist of re-enactments of real events as remembered by the people playing themselves. The purpose of these scenes will be to provide set-up and perspective for subjects, situations, or relationships which currently appear in the screenplay without the requisite/normal amount of context."

Now why in the world was Amy Pascal so shocked (or, rather, "apoplectic" as it was relayed to the production team) when she read the June 17th draft? Could Soderbergh have made his intentions any more clear? Even if these executives did not read beyond PAGE 1, they would have known the direction in which he wanted to take the film – and they should have perhaps reported that to their boss. And maybe, just maybe, if there had been communication with their boss, maybe, just maybe, another avenue could have been taken rather than pulling the plug three days before the film was supposed to start shooting. For instance, maybe they could have delayed principal photography while script/concept issues were resolved.

Our tipster closed with this note:

On the day that Amy Pascal pulled the plug, there were 230 people that were working on Moneyball. Now those 230 people are all out of jobs.

When Soderbergh had to address a stage filled with crew members who were about to lose their jobs, he told us that just as Moneyball was the unorthodox version of building baseball teams, Moneyball the movie was the unorthodox way of making a film. Unfortunately, Amy Pascal does not believe in Moneyball as a concept; otherwise the film would be in its second week of shooting right now.

So there you have it—Another side of the story. All of this is obviously meaningless in the grand scheme of life, not to mention very "inside baseball" (pun intended), but it's so damn fun to talk about. We anxiously await the next bit of backbiting to emerge between the Sony and Soderbergh camps.

Why Did Sony Kill the Pitt/Soderbergh Film Adaptation of Michael Lewis' Moneyball [Previously]
MLB Approval Still Murky as Moneyball Circles the Drain [Movieline]
Money Worries Kill A-List Film at Last Minute [New York Times]
Soderbergh's Moneyball Script Too Real to Get Made [Deadspin]
pic via Vulture

Everyone loved Steven Zallian's version (he's an Oscar-winner, you know!), because it had jokes and snappy dialogue and actually made sabermetrics non-mind numbing. But Soderbergh wanted realism so much, he was determined to only film events that took place in real life. He also scrapped the conceit of having Bill James as the "Greek chorus", bookending the film with his anecdotes with and wise old man stories. The verdict:

That might make for an intriguing art film, but it clearly was no longer a film that any studio would spend $58 million to make, especially with baseball films having virtually no appeal outside of the U.S.

We got our hands on the Soderbergh draft, and it's about as bad as others have said. Gone, thankfully, is the Beane-as-dork-Messiah stuff. Soderbergh's Beane is more of a proxy for the audience this time — Bud Fox meets Crash Davis, as they say in Hollywood — and in his script, Moneyball is more of a Beane-Paul DePodesta buddy movie, which maybe makes some sense when you imagine Brad Pitt and Demetri Martin in those roles. Maybe.

The script was probably doomed from its second page, from which the above image was taken. Here's Soderbergh's disclaimer:

Billy Beane's minor and major league career will be shown via filmed interviews with scouts, coaches, managers, players, and family members who were with him at the time. These interviews will comprise approximately ten percent of the film.

Another ten percent of the film will consist of re-enactments of real events as remembered by the people playing themselves. The purpose of these scenes will be to provide set-up and perspective for subjects, situations, or relationships which currently appear in the screenplay without the requisite/normal amount of context.

All that is to say an important portion of this film will be written in the editing room. This isn't a cop-out; it's just a fact, and entirely by design.

That sounds an awful lot like, "Yes, this script sucks. But trust me. I made The Limey." It was probably at this point that Amy Pascal, the Sony executive, optioned the script to the bottom of her coffee mug. Even though it was five days from shooting and Sony had already sunk $10 million dollars into the film, Pascal pulled the plug. The movie is now in limbo. The studio would presumably still make the Zaillian version if they could find a director, but would likely lose Brad Pitt if Soderbergh walks. And the current talent is free to take the project somewhere else, but no one is biting, because that brings us all back to the original argument, "Why anyone make a movie about this?" Maybe Scott Hatteberg is really big overseas?

(Additional Soderbergh script reveals, information by Tommy Craggs.)

Sony's Amy Pascal speaks out about 'Moneyball' [Los Angeles Times, via Gawker]
What happened to...Moneyball? [ScriptShadow]
Billy Beane Is A Golden God: Excerpts From The Scrapped Moneyball Script

Rumors have been swirling since Variety first reported last week that Soderbergh's vision for the film differed dramatically from the vision studio executives had for the film, but up to this point no one associated with the project has been willing to speak on the record about it.

But yesterday Sony's Amy Pascal, the studio executive in charge of the film, spoke to the LA Times' Patrick Goldstein. According to Pascal, what it all boiled down to was essentially simple—The studio loved screenwriter Steven Zaillian's original adaptation of Lewis' book, while Soderbergh felt the script lacked authenticity and rewrote it himself, making radical changes that Pascal and the studio weren't willing to gamble on, fearful that Soderbergh would turn it into an "artsy" film like Solaris or Schizopolis, especially when baseball movies traditionally don't do well at the box office outside of the United States. Soderbergh was insistent that everything in the movie had to have happened in real life.

Reports Goldstein:

Some changes to Zaillian's script were subtle, others were dramatic. At one point, Beane signs Scott Hatteberg, a journeyman catcher with a bad arm whom Bean can get for peanuts and turn into a first baseman. Beane loves Hatteberg's ability to get on base, but his staff is appalled — he just can't turn anyone into a slick-fielding first baseman overnight. In Zaillian's script, one of the coaches watches Hatteberg taking ground balls at a Little League field, his wife armed with a plastic laundry basket full of baseballs. She hits the balls to her husband off a tee, with their 4-year-old daughter backing him up down the line. One ball takes a bad hop and goes between Hatteberg's legs. When his daughter scoops it up, the coach quips: "Maybe we should sign her."

Soderbergh cut out the joke because it was the screenwriter's invention — the coach had never actually said it. He also cut out a scene where Beane gives a tongue-lashing to Jason Giambi, one of his departing free agents, again because it didn't actually happen. Zaillian's script was anchored by on-screen monologues by Bill James, the oddball guru of modern-day baseball statistics (who today works in the Boston Red Sox front office). James functioned as a Greek chorus for the film, offering wry, Yoda-like explanations about the complexity of the game.

Zaillian's deft renditions of James' maxims were funny and always to the point, allowing the audience the opportunity to see inside the game. In one monologue, James says: "If you score three runs and the other team scores four, you can be inspired as all hell but you still lost. The numbers represent the ineluctable sum of victories and defeats, and that cannot be made one iota larger or smaller than it is by PR campaigns, personal animosities or any of the greater and lesser forms of B.S." But in Soderbergh's draft, the James material had all vanished, presumably to be replaced by interviews with Beane's real-life associates.

At a "summit" held after Soderbergh turned in his draft of the script, he reportedly pleaded "trust me" to the Sony executives, who were obviously unwilling to do so. Besides Pitt, the film was also set to star comedian Demetri Martin as well as former ballplayers Darryl Strawberry, Mookie Wilson, David Justice and Lenny Dykstra, but Soderbergh's unrelenting zeal for authenticity proved to be the project's demise.

Bob Costas would be proud.

As for Michael Lewis, he seems unfazed by the developments with the film version of his book, telling MSNBC recently, "I don't understand why they bought it for a movie in the first place."

Sony's Amy Pascal Speaks Out About Moneyball [LA Times]
Image via Vulture

Per a Variety report that dropped today, Columbia Studio head Amy Pascal hated the script so much when she got it, she shut down production on the movie, which was supposed to start Monday in Phoenix. The script, adapted from Lewis' book by Steve Zaillian (American Gangster, Schindler's List) and Steven Soderbergh, had changed so much since Pascal had first seen it, that she's given Soderbergh and Pitt the weekend to find a new home for the movie, either with Paramount or Warner Bros.

The movie, starring Brad Pitt, Demetri Martin, and a bunch of actual baseball players (David Justice, et al) isn't exactly a traditional baseball flick, but this was also the project that ended up sidelining Steven Soderbergh's epic - and hopefully, epically flamboyant - musical take on the life of Cleopatra ("Cleo"), so, you know, you get what you pay for. Variety suggests that if they can't line someone else up to take over the bill of the movie, Columbia's either going to (A) try to replace Soderbergh on the project, (B) delay production indefinitely until Soderbergh and Pascal can agree on what's going to happen once the thing gets back into gear or (C) scrap the entire thing.

Meanwhile, Michael Lewis is still sitting on piles of money from his Vanity Fair writing contract and this, while a small bump in the road for him, certainly isn't the end of it. This project's far too beloved by Hollywood for it to go anywhere but (eventually) into production, and Brad Pitt's probably not going to stick around if Soderbergh gets taken off of it.

But most importantly, here's the list of facepalm-worthy baseball wordplay Variety used in their report:

"Columbia Pictures has dropped the ball"
"attempting to get another studio to play ball in a game that will play out"
"turnaround news on "Moneyball" is surprising, given that had reached the equivalent of third base"
"Oakland A's general manager who found success fielding competitive teams for low cost"

Sony scraps Soderbergh's 'Moneyball' [Variety]

Lewis reportedly earned $30,000 a pop for his New York Times Magazine stories. Then he got a fat contract with Portfolio, which a wild Web rumor said was worth $100,000 per year for just two articles. Then he renegotiated for an even better deal, even though Portfolio was already starting to hurt. Then Lewis got hired away for presumably even more money by Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair. That last move came after it was clear the economy was imploding, making it an especially impressive coup.

Now? Brad Pitt wants to adapt into a movie Moneyball, Lewis' book about poor-but-scrappy baseball franchise the Oakland A's. Steven Soderbergh is in talks to direct, Variety reports. Lewis won't make Pitt-level money, but he should get a nice cut, the bastard.

Journalist types might wonder if Liar's Poker, Lewis' debut book about his time at Salomon Brothers, might now be a more compelling movie. Not only is it a romp through the freewheeling culture of 1980s Wall Street, but it also gives the reader a front-row seat at the creation of mortgage-backed securities, the instruments at the root of the present financial crisis.

Warner Brothers has owned the rights for a few years, but another studio could swoop in and buy them up if it so desired.

On second thought, though, maybe audiences today would prefer an escapist tale about a baseball team that overcomes financial hardships and ends up champions to one about the financial wizards who, if only indirectly, got them into their present economic mess.

Lewis' feud with former Salomon Brothers CEO John Gutfreund was especially fraught, because he worked for Gutfreund before betraying him. Lewis' Liar's Poker portrayed a crude, cutthroat culture of excess under Gutfreund at Salomon Brothers, where Lewis worked as a bond salesman. That and a bond trading scandal helped push Gutfreund out within two years of the book's publication.

Cue the Lewis-Gutfreund reunion, amid still more Wall Street carnage:

They weren't the hands of a soft Wall Street banker but of a boxer. I looked up. The boxer was smiling-though it was less a smile than a placeholder expression. And he was saying, very deliberately, "Your…fucking…book."

I smiled back, though it wasn't quite a smile.

"Your fucking book destroyed my career, and it made yours," he said.

I didn't think of it that way and said so, sort of.

"Why did you ask me to lunch?" he asked, though pleasantly. He was genuinely curious.

You can't really tell someone that you asked him to lunch to let him know that you don't think of him as evil. Nor can you tell him that you asked him to lunch because you thought that you could trace the biggest financial crisis in the history of the world back to a decision he had made...

...He watched me curiously as I scribbled down his words. "What's this for?" he asked.
I told him I thought it might be worth revisiting the world I'd described in Liar's Poker, now that it was finally dying. Maybe bring out a 20th-anniversary edition.

"That's nauseating," he said.

One hopes there was at least some scotch on hand, maybe a coupe of martinis.

(Lewis photo via Morning News)

It's hard to say. But it's worth noting, as the Observer does, that one month before jumping on board with Carter, Lewis and his wife, onetime MTV News reporter Tabitha Soren, were treated to their first dinner at the bon vivant's West Vllage restaurant Waverly Inn. That sort of thing shouldn't matter to a writer who reportedly nets $30,000 for each of his Times pieces. But then one shouldn't be able to get away with charging $55 for a plate of macaroni and cheese, however adorned, and people still jam the secret phone lines for a Waverly reservation.

It is not only Wall Street that is susceptible to the whims of fashion, or to panicked flights from troubled institutions.

At this point, the soul of professional sports is beyond worrying about: Athletes are frantically self-interested; marvelously self-absorbed; always looking for any edge, however unfair; and forever leaping from team to team in search of a few more dollars. In other words, the jock market already has the morals of the stock market.

"Michael Lewis is receiving $12+ a word from Portfolio. $100k, two pieces this year, each approximately 4k words." Let's assume for the moment that these figures are in fact accurate, and that Michael Lewis is pocketing $24 for every "of course" he can slip by the magazine's phalanx of editors. (The yearly amount of his contract doesn't sound totally insane, at least.) Is this the new gold standard for magazine writing? Did Tom Wolfe give them a discount because they hired his daughter? Did John Hockenberry get screwed over because his piece was mainly pictures? Again, we're unsure—although that $125 million investment figure makes a lot more sense if this is true—but is anyone out there making more than $12 a word? And who's paying? And where can we get some? We can turn around 3000-word pieces of absolute crap whenever necessary. —balk

Our Big, Fat Portfolio Review: Even Our Pessimism Was Optimistic [DealBreaker]
The Jock Exchange [Portfolio]

Inside that cover, there are a healthy eleven pages of ads before Lipman's Editor's Letter, ranging from the stolid (GE, Chevron, Fidelity, etc.) to the sexy (BMW, Visa's line of luxury cards). Lipman's letter is almost aggressively boastful about the vapidity of the content that you'll find within the book; Portfolio is apparently the brilliant girl in high school who acted dumb to attract the boys. "Today's 24/7 news cycle bombards us with information but gives us less time to process it," says Lipman, who notes that:

We chose a monthly frequency for Cond Nast Portfolio so we can offer you deep dives into important subjects, providing you with the most compelling—and most useful—information. After this issue, we take a break and begin publishing monthly with our September issue.

After a three page Ralph Lauren spread we come to the Table of Contents page. As is this case with most upmarket titles aimed (ideally!) at people who want to have something to flip through while their driver hies them to Teterboro, the T.O.C. is broken up by ad pages. We pass by Rolex (one page), Armani (spread), Canon (spread), Travelers Insurance (spread), hit the second page of the T.O.C., and then it's a Hermes one pager and a Cartier spread to take us to the Contents' conclusion. We're certainly feeling an urge to consume! Up next is a foldout ad for Grey Goose. We're certainly feeling an urge to become incredibly drunk! There's an ad for Think Tank ("an exclusive forum for Conde Nast Portfolio readers to share their thinking") that directs you to the Portfolio website, where you can join this virtual community. (Sure, Conde may be shelling out upwards of $100 million on a new print mag, but they get the Web.) Calvin Klein has a three page ad, Van Heusen is in for one, DeBeers takes a spread, Portfolio.com gets another plug (they get the Web), IBM has four pages and then, lo and behold, there's an ad for Portfolio.com (they get the Web)! A two page Prudential "Red Zone" ad follows and looks like nothing so much as a promo for Old Spice.

And then is something called "Photo Genesis." It's about how "the biggest names in business can be tricky to photograph," presumably because they are all vampires for whom sunlight represents the ultimate enemy. Is this section some kind of contributor's page for the photogs? Probably! FedEx is in for a page, Goldman Sachs gets a spread to show how much they love developing countries, which they illustrate with eight pictures of children who will no doubt be adopted by Angelina Jolie in the immediate future. Hyatt Place—a new hotel designed around you—takes a spread. BlackBerry's got a single-pager starring the CEO of Capital Management Group.

Then it's the second page of Photo Genesis. Look, there's Tom Wolfe! And Bill Ford! Also, business people only ask for one photographer by name: Annie Leibovitz. Why? She's the only one they've ever heard of.

Cargill goes for a spread and then we reach the Index of Companies and People mentioned in the magazine, which is presumably placed here to remind you that there's some sort of business element to the book. The index is, of course, interspersed with more ads (four pages for Ameriprise Financial), but we did note that Conde Nast is not included. David Geffen gets three mentions, apparently, and Peter Guber one. We're starting to get a better idea of what the magazine is about.

Banana Republic has a spread—the pastels make our eyes happy—and then it's the masthead. Let's give a random shout-out to Art Assistant Paloma Shutes as we whiz by. CreditSuisse has a foldout ad, which is backed by THe FILe, "events + promotions + news from our advertisers." Um, what the hell else has the magazine been thus far? Ermenegildo Zegna does four pages, in two of which well-dressed gentlemen are shown reading the Financial Times. Ooh, showing a real business publication in the pages of Portfolio. This magazine is ballsy!

The second page of THe FILe directs you to, yes, Portfolio.com (who gets the Web?). An Omega watch ad surrounds the business masthead, and this time we're gonna give a wave to Events Director Elise Mehrige. Lincoln takes four pages, CA gets one and then... Contributors!

This is an odd layout. The writers are shown on a map of the world with datelines underneath their names signifying where they reported from. It's a little jarring:

Gabriel Sherman
NAPLES, FLORIDA

looks like a nametag you'd see on a server at an Applebees. (Also, Gabriel Sherman looks kind of like Macaulay Culkin if he were just about to be molested by Tom Wolfe, which, for all we know, may be the plot of Home Alone 5.)

Samsung, John Hardy and UBS account for four pages, and then we get "MAY AGENDA," which, at page 87, can be fairly said to be the first piece of real content in the magazine. Our first impression is that we have mistakenly picked up the world's heaviest New York: there's something about the layout and line art that feel vaguely Mossian. But what's on the calendar? The Kentucky Derby's on May 5th, and there's "speculation that Queen Elizabeth II will be on hand." There's a gala for the Met on the 7th. The iPhone launches in June, but we'll not see another Portfolio until September, so best to cram it in now. (Incidentally, this counts as one of the two mentions of Steve Jobs in this issue, if the Index is at all accurate.) There's a goofy icon of the Google boys (shareholders' meeting on the 10th, y'all!), and then it's back to the ads.

Four-page foldout for Accenture featuring Tiger Woods. THe FILe gets another page. 650 Sixth Avenue—the first piece of real estate advertising we've seen thus far!— does a one-pager. It's "gallery style condominium living," which sounds incredibly hip and happening. Plus it's right near The Container Store! Northwestern Mutual does a spread, Patek Philippe has one page, and now we're at brief. The magazine may actually be starting for real this time!

Stick with us, we're not doing this for ourselves!

Brief is: "WHO'S DOING WHAT TO WHOM AND WHY." Wow, that's Us Weekly's mission statement too! Apparently this is the "front of book." Jesse Eisinger does a bit on how private equity firms are doing such gigantic deals that they can no longer avoid scrutiny. It's broken up by a Xerox spread, so we sort of lost the thread in the middle, but there's half-page graphy/charty thing on the other side that, again, looks like it came out of New York.

After an Intel ad we get a brief interview with Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin. (Kudos to the editors for going with "Siriusly Speaking" rather than "The Karmazin' Race.") Mel claims to have learned "nothing good" from former employer Sumner Redstone. Interviewer Nancy Hass asks some toughish questions, but stuff like "You are a man with an urge to merge" doesn't exactly go for the jugular. Below the interview is a photo-laden timeline that could have come from Radar, Spy or Vanity Fair, actually.

Microsoft has a page, and then there's a photospread on the ad people who will make the big decisions at the television upfronts. Unilever's Laura Klauberg has nice legs. A Microsoft spread following up on the previous ad gives way to a page on architecture ("Mine's Bigger") that is both chart and list on the "ridiculous race to build the world's tallest building." Canali has a page. The next page has a cartoon! It's about corporate-cafeteria health-code violations! (Advertiser Credit Suisse, as well as Newsweek and Verizon get mentions, but there is nothing about the Conde caf, which we're sure is spotless.)

There's a then-and-now charticle (So many entry points!) concerning Bubble 2.0 (FAVORITE POL: Then: Bill, Now: Hillary. You get the idea). After another page of THe FILe, there's a humorous collection of real excuses corporations made for not meeting estimates, which is slightly less amusing when you realize that the item atop it is all about MINING DEATHS. Well, we guess they both do fall under the "WORKPLACE" rubric.

Nic Cage is selling Montblanc watches? What, they couldn't find anyone creepier? Anyway, that ad is followed up by a four-page Merrill Lynch thing. Their slogan is "TOTAL MERILL" which seems an odd choice when it's placed directly next to a giant bull. Anyway. There's a full spread about China's preparation for the 2008 Olympics, which mainly consists of a giant picture of the still-under-construction stadium. Helpful logos at bottom bring you information about how much steel is being used, daily worker pay, etc.

Porsche has an ad spread. There's a page about exit compensation that tries to muster some outrage about the giant sums given to underperforming executives upon their departure that would be more convincing were it not placed aside an ad for Audemars Piguet watches, which are apparently made for the rich executive with Asperger's. That ad continues on for three more pages, and is followed by an ad from Portfolio.com thanking its "digital partners" for "embracing innovation."

"THE LAST WORD" in brief is an Alexandra "Daughter of Tom" Wolfe piece on "the past year's most extravagant bar and bat mitzvahs." As our co-editor Emily said, "I remember reading 'there are lavish bar mitzvahs' articles when i was PREPARING FOR MY BAT MITZVAH. And they had better headlines." (This one is called "Mazel Top This," so we're inclined to agree.) Still, you're not going to see pictures of Snoop Dogg and Liza Minnelli in fusty old Forbes, are you?

We don't read Forbes, so that's an actual question.

Burberry: One page. Mass Mutual: a spread. And, here we go. Columnists. John Cassidy tackles Economics (Global warming might not be as bad as we think, economists say. Oh do they.) Jesse Eisenger covers Wall Street (Will derivatives fuck up the market? Maybe not! But probably!). At this point we're just gonna stop counting the ads unless there's something really sexy or egregious, but trust us, there's one on every other page. We're not sure what they're charging over at Conde, but even if it's pennies they've probably already earned out on that 100-million-dollar investment.

Gabriel Sherman (NAPLES, FLORIDA) profiles Bruce Sherman (no relation). Sherman's the CEO of Private Capital Management, and he's got newspaper owners everywhere pissing in their Ermenegildo Zegna trousers (wow, those ads really work!) as he tries to destroy the industry force news conglomerates to become more efficient through the bullying tactic we currently refer to as "shareholder activism." Sherman has already been successful in forcing Knight Ridder to sell itself off. Now he's teaming up with Morgan Stanley's Hasan Elmasry in an attempt to do the same to the New York Times Company. (Good luck with that. No seriously, good luck!) This is a lengthy, detailed profile that may be of interest to the casual reader who knows little about mysterious asset managers who are trying to change the way newspapers focus on their bottom lines. Not being among such we cannot judge it on its merits, but again, long and detailed. So points for that.

Sheelah Kolhatkar wonders why there aren't more women making the deals for private equity firms. (Answer: Men are bad.) It's a spread with a big picture of the six women who apparently have made it in the man's world, and there's a chart on the following page of the men who run the show. We don't really follow finance all that closely and we still feel like we knew everything in this piece. Still, it's mercifully brief, so we're giving the same amount of points that we did to the Sherman thing.

Michael Lewis, who made his name writing about finance and then revitalized his career by writing a book about finance as it pertains to sports, has an article about sports finance. It's a little logo-heavy, but so long as he's not writing about his children, we've always found Lewis extremely readable. You could do worse!

Special four-page Mark Ecko advertorial supplement. The sound you hear is us skipping over the pages with the celerity of Paul Rubens at a masturbation contest. Kolhatkar returns with a piece on Ken Griffin, "hedge fund wunderkind." It starts off with this: "The people who run hedge funds, as everyone knows, are tight-lipped." We did know that! You know who else is tight-lipped? Bruce Sherman, asset manager. Still, he talked to Portfolio, just like Ken Griffin, who untightened his lips long enough to talk about his wife and his art collection. Will he take Citadel, his hedge fund, public? "It's a strategic option." We feel somehow less informed.

Someone should tell the people who do print ads for Loews Hotels that color photographs superimposed over silver tint makes for a jarring, hideous ad.

"Behind the Green Doerr" is an article about John Doerr, a venture capitalist who wants to help the environment or something. We refuse to read any more articles about "green" anything—seriously, fuck the environment—so we can't evaluate this one, but it begins with Bono, which may give you some idea of where it goes.

Art! There's an art piece! It's about Marianne Boesky, the daughter of Ivan, whom older readers may remember as Wall Street's 80's symbol of greed gone wild. This one is sort of interesting. Also the art industry can be as cut-throat as the financial industry. We're going to go back and really read this one later. Also, it seems like Mike Ovitz comes off as a dick, which is always enjoyable.

Former Time writer Matt Cooper is still working his fifteen minutes of Plame. Matt was so totally ready to go to prison over the leak of the CIA agent's identity, right up until the moment where he spilled everything to stay out of jail. Best line: "As [Judy] Miller was hauled off to jail and I was let go, I told her to stay strong." Ever the comedian, we don't doubt that Cooper added something about not bending down for the soap.

There's a ten-page Lexus ad. If nothing else this magazine makes you realize how little money you have in your savings account. Or, we suppose, how much.

Here we are at page 227. We're in the final third of the damn thing now. It's culture | inc. (WHERE art MEETS commerce). Quick piece, complete with charticle, on the ins-and-outs of arts patronage. Alexandra Wolfe looks at the Chinese art market: Is it inflated? Some say yes! Others are unsure! A little infobox with five contemporary Chinese artists adds value, we guess. Investing in the theater: It's a risky proposition! Eileen Daspin introduces you to some folks who think that Legally Blonde: The Musical will somehow help cover their nut. Graphical box included for your pleasure. "DECONSTRUCTED PROGRAM" does the annotated document thing so popular with editors these days. Portfolio chooses to examine who's funding the Seattle Symphony. The answers may surprise you, particularly if you don't know anything about Seattle. Or the Symphony. Or people who might care about those two things in combination.

Level Vodka ad. Mmm. Vodka.

How is Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons helping to turn around the fortunes of the struggling Apollo Theater? A photicle (you know, the big picture accompanied by the small, numbered line art drawing that tells you who everyone is) may provide the answers!

There's a piece about the private equity/asset management guys who own Octone Records, which is responsible for Maroon 5. Bastards. Also, "This Love" is now stuck in our head. MOTHERFUCKERS.

Now it's THE GOLD Standard, Portfolio's Strategist. Things you should buy your rich fat ass this month: Tennis rackets, cameras, watches, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan, a book about our inability to accept that life is essentially random. Having waded this far through Portfolio we are entirely convinced. A few capsule book reviews trail after.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, direct your attention to page 267, where Tom Wolfe examines the NEW MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. Guess what? They're hedge fund managers! Do you like Tom Wolfe writing about rich people? Then go buy Portfolio, because he's doing it some more in this issue.

What else! The ruler of Dubai likes horsies. Horsie dynasty graphic included. Is Ford fucked? We're not sure, the article jumps to the back. Eira Thomas is a Canadian diamond mining magnate who is styled in green gown and mining boots. She lives in two different worlds! John Hockenberry wants you to know that if you pay taxes you are helping to fund the military/industrial complex. Ryan Kavanaugh is some red-headed 32-year-old standing on the corner where Hollywood meets Wall Street. (This one might actually be interesting, we see Harvey Weinstein barking in it.) Harry Hurt III writes about someone other than himself for once: Texas legend T. Boone Pickens. Oh, look, here's the rest of that Ford piece. Yeah, it's probably fucked. We're almost there! Look, an ad for Portfolio.com on your mobile! (They get the etc.) Okay, back page! It's "the demystifier." It's a charticle explaining the credit default swap. We still don't get it. Final ad: four page Cadillac foldout.

So, Portfolio? Honestly, this really is the Vanity Fair for the finance set. With the resources they're planning to pour into it, we don't doubt it'll survive for a couple years at least. Is it a good magazine? That depends! If you think Vanity Fair and New York are good magazines—and many people seem to—then, yes, you will find this a good magazine. By the standards of Manhattan, it certainly reeks of overclass success: fat, healthy, holding up a glass of high-end vodka with a $15,000 watch weighing down each wrist. —balk

The Sisters Welcome Their New Brother [Slate]

[Image via]