It really is worth reading Torontoist's loving exposé of City Living, proof that success in the media can be found anywhere, anyhow. Maybe publisher and founder Patricia Binns was inspired by her very own self?

Charming of exquisite beauty, articulate, cultured, Patricia E. Binns created a magazine that would stay on coffee tables longer than any other and she named it City Living Magazine because it was devoted to all that was distinctive, beautiful and elegant.

Disturbing.

The first installment in the six-book series is called I Am Number Four, and it was being shopped around with pseudonyms but now everyone has found out who was behind it. Oprah's worst enemy, James Frey (if that is his real name!).

The Times gives the following synopsis:

The story is about a group of nine children from a planet called Lorien who have been attacked by a hostile race from another planet. The nine children and their guardians evacuate to earth, where three are killed. The protagonist, a Lorien boy named John Smith, hides in Paradise, Ohio, as a human and tries to evade his predators.

Reached in Paris, Frey risked his promotion to Gawker special correspondent by playing coy with us: "I can neither confirm nor deny that I had anything to do with that book."

Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg are involved in the movie optioning, and the old Bay boy might even direct! So good for Mr. Frey. From career embarrassment with A Million Little Pieces, to hard-working beer-fetching Gawker HQ lackey, to snappy teen sci-fi writer with a movie deal.

See why you should let us work you to death and never pay you? Eventually, Steven Spielberg will make sure you get yours. Meanwhile, we're still here... Hm.

Image via Splash

As Eve Brice, 86, waited for the action to begin at Town East Bingo last week, she thumbed through the September issue.

There she learned that the day's lucky color was blue, that fellow bingo enthusiast Rodger Hall grew up in Dunseith, N.D., (population 739) and that the newspaper's advice columnist, "Nosy," counsels readers to protect their lucky seats by arriving early rather than by confronting interlopers.

"I don't go out to shows, I don't run around with men, but I'm here every night," Mrs. Brice said. "And I love her paper."

The secrets of Ms. Mouser's success: Don't shy away from hard-hitting topics ("recent issues, for example, have urged readers to educate themselves about which candidates will support the bingo industry"); keep it upbeat ( "'I like to do profiles, anything that's lighthearted. I don't do negative stuff,' Ms. Mouser said."); and, most critically, don't be afraid to push the envelope:

The biggest buzz generator, she said, is the joke section – which runs two full pages.

"The jokes are the most popular thing I have in there," she said. "But I get a lot of complaints from people who think they're too risqué."

Mrs. Brice thinks the jokes are great.

"It's just how people are," she said. "It's racy, but it's fun."

A few tables over, Jean Wheat, 80, of Mesquite, acknowledges that some of the humor is bluer than you would find in your average church bulletin, but she likes Bingo Gossip enough that she not only reads it from cover to cover but also passes it on.

New York is waiting, Ms. Mouser.

[Dallas Morning News]

The 28-year-old blonde actress was spotted visiting the 39-year-old actor at his Malibu, California home on Monday, following his appearance at the Oscars the night before. And on Saturday morning, Wilson was photographed leaving Hudson's Pacific Palisades home, before reuniting with the actress later that day at 5pm at his own home."

Finally, some good news on the trouble-laden star front! After a year filled with overdoses, manic meltdowns and senseless gun battles with Eddie Munster, we're glad to see that notorious slacker Owen Wilson is setting a positive example for how the drug-and-drink obsessed Young Hollywood set can comeback from Difficult Setbacks™. Are you listening, Dr. Drew? Scrap Daniel Baldwin from Season Two of Celebrity Rehab and see if you can't convince Owen Wilson to come on board as the group's mentor; we're sure that Verne Troyer would appreciate the opportunity to network with the shaggiest of the Wilson siblings.

• BACK ON? KATE HUDSON 'REKINDLES HER ROMANCE' WITH TROUBLED EX OWEN WILSON [Daily Mail]

"For every game show on television, somebody says it's too slow," Darnell says. "'Deal or No Deal,' for all its energy, can be slow. When opening those first 10 boxes, I feel like I'm gonna kill myself."

That said, Darnell says the "Moment" pace will pick up.

"It's always been a semi-issue with the show because you have the pauses between the revelation and [the lie detector result]," he says. "You gotta have that to watch the reaction of the friends and family. But we're going to try to quicken the pace a little bit."

The show's promised "end of western civilization" drama will increase as well, Darnell says, particularly once the show shifts to the 8 p.m. hour in early March.

"We intentionally opened with a middle-of-the-road episode," he says. "I didn't want people from middle America to freak out coming out of 'American Idol.'"

Thankfully, Darnell and Fox have realized that early March will seem like an eternity to viewers who've already been tortured by the agonizing months of waiting for the polygraph-enabled, civilization-eroding fun to begin, setting up a lie-along-at-home version of Truth on the network's website to keep the impatient entertained while they wait for the show to finally hit its stride. With just a few clicks of a mouse, fans can invite their co-workers, spouses and friends to answer the kinds of uncomfortably probing, provocative questions they've now seen on the show, though without the tantalizing promise of a huge pile of cash in return for destroying their romantic or professional relationships with greed-motivated honesty.

• Fox's Darnell Relieved Critics Dislike 'Moment' [TV Week]
• The Moment of Truth Game [Fox.com]

MSNBC's Abrams to Be Anchor, Not Manager [NYT]

A Malibu judge yesterday said the Oscar winner, who was busted for drunken driving in July 2006, has completed his court-ordered alcohol-cessation program.

"The AA meetings are no longer under his probation's conditions," a spokeswoman with the district attorney's office said.

Obviously, Gibson would only benefit from continuing to attend the meetings: As any successful 12-stepper can tell you, while it might get easier to resist your demons over time, the threat of a relapse is always there, and all it would take is a citrusy whiff from a freshly cracked Tequiza to send the actor tailspinning right back to Jew-loathing square one.

• Mel can quit AA anytime he wants [NY Daily News]

To be fair, her first review, of Gemma, isn't written that poorly at all. And we might even agree, partially, with it. Though there's her troubling use of weirdly anatomical verbs to contend with: "The enormous wood oven also births sweet sensations...."

What remains stuck in our craw is not that she has a face but that she shoves it everywhere she can. She then tries to mask what is essentially vainglory with bizarre contortions of logic. As Joe Dziemanowicz puts it in an odd announcement-feature in her new paper (accompanied, of course, by a picture):

"I have consciously made the choice to be accessible to readers as well as chefs and restaurateurs," she explains, "in order to communicate my experience of whether or not a chef has successfully achieved his or her goals." [...]

"I was looking for a critic to identify with," says the 33-year-old Harvard graduate from New Jersey. "There was no one that I could relate to because I couldn't put a face with a voice."

And if that doesn't convince you as to why she should plaster her face everywhere, the following surely must convince you of why she can.

"I fundamentally believe restaurants don't bring in a new chef or run out to get new ingredients just because they spot a critic," she says. Her radar will be tuned to determine whether she's getting special treatment."