In a column in Ad Age, Fuller claims to know that the A-Rod/Madonna text message affair has been going on for months. Her "own source" even witnessed Madonna enter an elevator with A-Rod six months ago! They didn't come back down for an hour!

Isn't it strange, then, that their relationship only went highly public just over three weeks ago when Madonna and her two sons turned up wearing Yankees gear and sitting in A-Rod's box at a Yankee Stadium baseball game?

Wasn't that just a couple of days after news reports had appeared saying the tickets for her upcoming tour weren't being snapped up as quickly as expected?

Yes! That makes perfect sense! Madonna entered into this affair half a year ago and has now gone public with it in order to boost ticket sales for her upcoming tour. One wonders why she didn't try this homewrecking celebrity scandal trick when she was, say, trying to boost sales of her album, but maybe she just thought she'd save the big guns for the slow July news season? This goes even deeper than you can possibly imagine!

Her supposedly "estranged" husband, Guy Ritchie, has joined her and appears to be completely in on the whole marketing plan. He's been photographed with his two sons wearing Yankee booty at Central Park in recent days. My guess is that if Madonna's marriage is almost over and out, as has been reported, it's being maintained now by two total pragmatists who have made a pact to divide the financial rewards of a successful concert tour and album sales.

As for all the kabbalah, I believe it's just a cover that's been used to give Madonna and her new conquest more private time together.

Wheels within wheels. We're through the looking glass here, people.

For our part, we wonder how the woman who practically single-handedly invented the modern Celebrity-Industrial Complex at Us Weekly and Star is now sounding like a crazy HuffPo commenter? It's probably due to some conspiracy she entered into with Madonna and the Church of Scientology or something.

It appears that Violet Blue's works were systematically removed from Boing Boing's archives. This was no mistake. So while BB would seem to be a great symbol of the blog revolution—that dreamy ideal of everyone in the world freely expressing themselves to all, with no corporate filter—they're also just another in an endless line of quirky media startups that found success, and then started acting just like the big establishment players to which they were once opposed. It's only natural. Like growing up and deciding that you'd rather work a nine-to-five than be a dirty Phish-following hippie, media outlets take on the trappings and responsibilities of success and find themselves writing rules and editing severely where once they would congratulate themselves on being outrageous.

This effect is more exaggerated in the media world than elsewhere. There are very few media outlets that will happily and openly stand up for the same scrutiny they routinely apply to others. That's because intense public scrutiny is a pain in the ass! Duh. It's also because people who go into the media tend to have an elevated level of narcissism, combined with a thin skin. We all want to be loved and adored, and fear rejection. Love me! Only me! I'm special!

I was a low-level "media reporter" for a couple years after covering several other beats, and I invariably found that, as a group, media people are the most insanely sensitive sources to deal with. Politicians love to talk—they're equally narcissistic, but with far thicker skins. Corporate people tend to have a cold, well-honed, and practical approach to being covered. But many reporters, editors, and media executives are guarded in interviews, reluctant to answer basic questions, and prone to relentless "follow-ups" with you to make absolutely sure they're quoted the way they want to be.

My theory was always that media people assume the rest of the media are like them. If they're a lazy hack, they're terrified of placing their reputation in the hands of another reporter, who they assume is also a lazy hack. If they're unscrupulous, they assume you are too. And if they're used to bending the rules—well, they better check on those quotes with you one more time.

Maybe a third of media people fall into this group. The rest are fine. And you know who the best of all are, as sources? Media reporters! They feel your pain. And hey, at least we're not in England, where newspaper editors routinely sue each other for libel. Christ.

Before you know it, Boing Boing will have lawyers, offices, corporate policies, a softball team, and everything. Just like Gawker Media and other evil corporations! In Autumn of the Moguls, Michael Wolff summed this whole phenomenon up pretty accurately:

Remember poor Brenda Walsh? She pouted and crooked-eyed her last after the Beverly Hills 90210 kids' first year of college. Shannen Doherty, who played the once innocent Brenda, was saddled with silly story lines about violent and criminal animal rights activism and a new dream of becoming a serious stage actress. She became the smoky loner, and, at the end of the season may have casting couched with her gross, Sheriff of Nottingham-esque drama teacher. Not a pleasant picture. The next season it was explained that Brenda was in England and wouldn't be back. Tiffani Amber-Thiessen moved into the house. End of story. Doherty is a notoriously difficult, tempestuous, and at times violent actress, so could the writers have been darkening-up Brenda to reflect their frustrations with Doherty? Mysteriously she was cast on another Aaron Spelling show a couple years later, the mesmerizingly bad Charmed, only to be handily dispatched after a couple of seasons. And why? For bad behavior.

Clashing with the behind-the-scenes creative folk is a good way to get axed from your show, whether it's done slowly (like in the possible case of Heigl/Izzie) or quick and painful. Rosemarie DeWitt, who played the hippie/beatnik mistress Midge on AMC's Mad Men, reportedly rubbed the show runners the wrong way and so her character was hastily written off. (Though, hm, IMDB says she'll be back in an upcoming episode). Ms. Heigl could learn a thing or two from these ladies (and many gentlemen, too) who foolishly bit the hands that fed them. Though maybe it's already too late. People tell me (you couldn't pay me to watch that odious piece of shit show) that Izzie was redeemed on Grey's by the end of the season, but maybe they're just giving her a swan song. Or, maybe, though the writers hate her, they were kindly reminded by execs that it kinda helps to have a budding movie star on your show, so all efforts to hold on to her should be made.

What do you think? Grey's watchers (why? why??), can this Izzie be saved?

Bilderberg is a yearly secret meeting of "120 or so billionaires, bankers, politicians, industrialists, scholars, government officials, influentials from labor and education, and journalists," which basically makes it a conspiracy theory magnet. Kissinger and Tony Blair and Dean Rusk all playing Boggle and plotting the New World Order! Everything is off the record and future presidents and prime ministers often attend but reportage of the event is always limited because it's off the record and no one can get in!

Cranky media critic Jack Shafer makes the point that if this secretive group was really controlling the world and building One World Government than they probably wouldn't put out press releases and stuff, but maybe that's just what they want you to think!

Would a shadow government, should it exist, really convene annually at a hotel to hash out the world's fate? Would it really issue a press release about its latest meeting? Would it routinely assume the security risks of inviting new blood in? (Couldn't the notorious Bilderberger Conrad Black negotiate his way out of prison by exposing the group? Or is Bilderberg so powerful that it controls the federal prison system, too?)

Maybe Conrad Black's just a distraction! Maybe they sent him to prison to throw us off the scent! Wheels within wheels, people!

Anyway we look forward to many more emails on the subject!

Hey, here are photos of Ben Bernanke and others arriving at this year's Bilderberg Conference. Enjoy! It's spooooooky!

The Bilderberg "Blackout" [Slate]

[NYT]

To whom it may concern:

If you used Facebook's search bar feature yesterday and were able to see your "top 5" friends, then there will be a PHP file containing the "o" ranking of every single one of your Facebook friends stored somewhere on your computer.

Please note: this tip applies to anyone whose computer saves temporary internet files.

(1) Open your "Temporary Internet Files" folder. (For example, from Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Internet Options > Settings > View Files.)

(2) Within the folder, look for files last accessed on May 13 around the time you first tested out the Facebook search bar function.

(3) You should be able to find a PHP file called "typeahead_search."

(4) Save this file to another folder and open it with a text editor like Notepad (or the Mac equivalent). You will see that the file contains script for every single one of your friends. (See the script here for an example.). If you search within the file for the name of any of your Facebook friends, you will find their ranking after the letter "o." The five people with the lowest "o" rankings will be the same as your "Facebook 5."

It was part of the autocomplete for the search box. The file the server sent when you clicked on the search box was a big list of Friends and groups (that it used to autocomplete when you type) like this:

{"t":"[Dude's Name]","i":2401357,"u":"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php

?id=2401357","o":216,"it":"","n":"Northwestern"}

for me the "o:" value here is 216 for the vast majority of the names,
216 being my total number of friends, but some are lower - lo and
behold people with 0-4 are the five people that show up in the search
box

o's just a ranking thing, like so when you type "a" it uses the o
value to figure out which names should come first, then everything
that's 216 is just in alphabetical order

The only thing that remains is how they computed the o values, I
assume the method was something nefarious. Anyway it's gone now, but I
hope this helps. I'm not affiliated with facebook or anything.

This morning, we got a tip about a sighting of Banksy painting on the side of Thunder Jacksons in NYC. Bucky Turco went and took pictures of the work. Shortly afterwards, Gothamist and others proclaimed that the piece was in fact by Nick Walker(pictured)—another well known stencil artist from Bristol, England.

Well.

The piece at Thunder Jacksons is by Nick Walker. You can see the theme in his own photos on Flickr. Our own original tipster wrote in to say, "I stand corrected. It wasn't Banksy - it was Nick Walker...the pics of the artwork show a signature that happens to be Nick Walker's. Youtube has some videos of Nick Walker working and he is the guy who was at TJ's last night."

But, asked for more information, the same tipster added this: "While he was outside doing his stencil sombody asked if he was banksy and he said he was."

Nick Walker said he was Banksy. [This is also corroborated by Gawker commenter chickenjungle, a.k.a. Abbe Diaz, here. She says she was at Thunder Jacksons last night and heard Walker say the same thing]. With that in mind, allow us to quote liberally from Bucky Turco's just-posted item at Animal NY:

According to a waitress at the newly stenciled Thunder Jackson restaurant, who witnessed Banksy painting the wall last night, "the whole thing took him about 15 minutes." When asked if she was positive it was Banksy, she emphatically stated "yes," and then awkwardly added, "Banksy is Nick Walker, they are the same person. Oops, I don't think I was supposed to say that." When pressed on why Banksy would use different names, she spilled, "He uses that identity because of visa and passport issues." The waitress added that Banksy is going to make a big announcement about his identity but not while he's in town, "He has a whole master PR plan, but he's waiting till he leaves the country."

Wow. If true.

Walker is often described as a predecessor, friend, and/ or rival of Banksy, and has certainly benefited from Banksy's publicity himself. He told Bloomberg last month:

Walker said that he had got know Banksy in Bristol, western England, in the late 1990s when he was invited to be part of the ``Walls on Fire'' group of graffiti artists.

``We don't talk too much now,'' he said.

Now let's run through the case against this theory. It started with an unsolicited tip. It has only a handful of sources. Theoretically, any of them could be lying, exaggerating, or misinformed. But it's worth noting that none of them have any readily apparent reason for making any of this up. We'd be happy to hear some art experts weigh in on Nick Walker vs. Banksy from a technical angle; but the similarities in their styles are obvious and unmistakable.

So, smart people: is Nick Walker Banksy?

In addition to top officials, these people include corporate executives, leading investors, top bankers, media moguls, heads of state, generals, religious leaders, heads of terrorist and criminal organizations and a handful of important cultural and scientific figures. Each of these roughly 6,000 individuals is set apart by their power and ability to regularly influence millions of lives across international borders.

Among the superclass members that Rothdopf names in his article: Rupert Murdoch, Martha Stewart, and Jon Stewart.

We'll be eagerly awaiting his follow-up study, "Capitalism, Dude: It's Not All It's Cracked Up To Be."

1) People Forgot What the Hell Was Going On
People are easily confused. Serialized television is hard to understand when you stop in the middle and then start up again on some arbitrary date. In the countless interviews magazines and newspapers have done with actors and other creative types on television shows, many have said things to the effect of "Oh we were just humming along, picking up momentum. It was such a bummer to have to stop." (Desperate Housewives' reinvigorating Dana Delaney storyline comes to mind). When there was nothing left for audiences to see, for an indefinite time, they slowly steeled themselves to cope with the bitter loss. It was time to move on and forget. And that's not easy to undo. It takes time and therapy. This is why comedies have done fine; there's no difficulty jumping right back in. My advice is to just let it be for now, then come back, publicity guns blazing, in the fall. That's what people are used to.

2) Like Adopted Gypsy Children, Viewers Secretly Wanted to Run Away
Many people don't like their addictions (I should know). But you suffer through them anyway because they're a part of you. If cigarettes were to just suddenly disappear one day, unavailable for months at a time, I'd probably quit once and for all. And I'd be happy about it. The same can probably be said for Ugly Betty or CSI. What better time to open a book, take a walk, or, more realistically, ramp up one's porn viewing and knickknack shopping on this creaky old internet? People, I think, were secretly glad for all this extra time in their lives. And now they don't want to cede it back to the glowing box, Dr. House MD be damned. I advise the networks to alter the way they relate viewership to advertisers, at least for the time being. Emphasize the quality and loyalty of the viewers who've stayed on. Everyone else will realize that they were rash and foolish to leave. They'll come crawling back. They always do.

3) Grand Theft Auto
America is a violent and hormonal teenage boy. People want things blown up, and they want them blown up now. I really have no sense of just how big this game is, but the computer and news people are telling me that lots and lots of people are playing it, often until the wee hours, instead of doing their civic duty and watching TV. If you can shoot/rape them yourself, why watch someone else do it on SVU? This, obviously, will blow over, once people beat it or get bored or realize they've been alone for three days and haven't said a word aloud in hours.

Basically, I don't think the nets should be too worried. These are just inevitable post-strike aftershocks. The main thing is to just focus on the fall, while churning out that popcorn reality garbage that people so love in the summer. And hey, CW. While you're at it, why not show some reruns of that summer series from long ago, Young Americans? I really miss that stupid show.

Stein says in his conclusion:

Watching money shows is largely a men's game. Men watch CNBC and the other business outlets more than women do. Someday it may change, and then maybe a magazine like Cosmopolitan will ask me to write a piece about money hunks. But for now, it's us pig men watching the money shows, in general, and we want to see women.

The first part of his statement is correct—men make up the majority of biz show viewers. The second part is partially correct—men like to see pretty women. But those facts together don't really explain anything.

Major sports broadcasting is dominated by ESPN, which is dominated by male personalities. Former professional athletes know that sports broadcasting is one of the sweetest gigs they can get when they retire, and they fill the ranks of the shows, from ESPN to the networks to smaller cable channels, from football to baseball to basketball to golf. Lots of sports shows and coverage of games trots out a token female—usually, yes, a beautiful woman called on to speak about the weather or chat with coaches at halftime or something equally irrelevant. There certainly are respected female sports broadcasters who have made their way through the ranks based on talent alone, but they are a decided minority. On the other hand, many of the most high profile male ex-athlete broadcasters are stone cold idiots.

I won't waste the space here arguing the point.

But as Stein also points out, that is not the case in business news. Fox Business and, to a lesser extent, CNBC are dominated not by crusty old retired male hedge fund managers, but by vivacious young attractive women. If it were simply a matter of broadcasters appealing to horny men like Ben Stein, there would be nothing but pretty women on both sports and business shows.

None of this implies that a network couldn't, if it wanted to, fill both its sports and business shows with an even mix of truly talented men and women. Rather, it implies that networks pander to what they perceive their audience wants.

The evidence points to one inescapable conclusion: Men take sports more seriously than they take business. Logical? No. True? Yes. American men would revolt if they felt that their sports broadcasters weren't sufficiently informed about the intricacies of the line stunt, the pick and roll, and the knuckle curve; but Wall Street men have no problem getting their business news—which could decide the fate of millions in investments—from women chosen primarily for their beauty.

Are there women on TV who are beautiful, intelligent, and well-informed about business? Yes. Maria Bartiromo comes to mind. But nobody can seriously argue that Fox combed the highest echelons of the finance community with only business acumen in mind to pick their broadcast team (you can scroll through here).

So, American man's warped perspective: Sports, important, Wall Street, whatever. At least as far as TV concerned. I'm glad that my own personal perspective is far more balanced, and if you don't pick Memphis in the tournament you are a fucking fool, so suck it Dick Vitale!

For the most part, it is not my purpose in this space to urge positions, or come down on one side or the other of a controversial question. Of course, I do those things occasionally and sometimes inadvertently, but more often than not I am analyzing arguments rather than making them; or, to be more precise, I am making arguments about arguments, especially ones I find incoherent or insufficiently examined.

That is exactly what we need in this crazy world.

But, in fact, a reader of a typical "Think Again" column will have no idea at all where I stand on the issues that catch my attention, because at least for the length of the column (as opposed to real life, which is much longer), I am agnostic on those issues and interested only in the way they are playing out in our present cultural moment. When, for example, I wrote three columns criticizing the atheist tracts written by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, I was motivated not by a belief in God — which I may or may not have, you'll never know — but by what I took to be sloppy, schoolboy reasoning that was passing itself off as wisdom. I could have been an atheist myself, and I still would have found the so-called logic of these books weak and risible.

Risible!

Is it the best thing to do? Is it good for the country? These are real questions, but they are not questions I take up, although a number of readers take me to task for the answers they presume me to have given. Cdn Expat writes that "Whether identity politics is 'rational' is hardly the question. The question is whether it is culturally and socially helpful." No, it isn't. That is Expat's question and I have no obligation either to ask or answer it. I'm just asserting the rationality of identity politics, not giving my blessing to it. Whether its exercise is culturally helpful is not something I consider. I just don't go there.

Is stuff good or bad? Stanley Fish just doesn't go there, y'all.

Well, that's his opinion, and I don't have a contrary one. I don't have one at all because I'm not doing moral parsing and find it spectacularly uninteresting. Calling someone a bigot and claiming the high ground for yourself may be momentarily satisfying, but it does little except provoke a response in the same mode. (It's bigoted of you to say that I'm a bigot.)

Stanley Fish is a dork! Wow, I feel myself momentarily satisfied, now that I have claimed the high ground. Can't wait to read the next column!

Here are some theories.

1. Page Six still bears a grudge; before there was perezhilton.com, the celebrity gossip maven published as pagesixsixsix.com. The Post had to threaten a lawsuit to stop Perez's joke on their name. The Post's own website, which launched late last year, is still lagging by comparison with the blog upstart; maybe the gentlemen's rule that protects print competitors doesn't apply in the brutally competitive world of web gossip.

2. When the Post's Paula Froelich is off duty, as she is this week, head honcho Richard Johnson tends to revert to old-fashioned baiting of women and gays. He's the one, after all, that made cheap digs at Vanessa Grigoriadis' supposed moustache when the New York writer dared describe Page Six as "emasculated".

3. The Post is merely pushing its own story forward. Last month, the Post's psychic predicted this turn of events for Perez: "His love life continues to suffer (no soulmate yet) but he will be in a love triangle - i.e. an affair with a very famous celebrity, making scandalous news himself."

But the most likely and least interesting theory? A crank sent in lurid chat transcript in which the world's most successful gossip blogger suffered the kind of embarrassment he's inflicted on celebrities. And that was, rule or no rule, irresistible.

For a decent grounding in the myths and realities of the NAFTA Superhighway story, here's the Washington Post's Fact Checker taking on the crazy musings of Republican presidential candidate and Emperor Of World Of Warcraft Ron Paul. For a more entertaining look at the issue, consult respected internet publications of record like World Net Daily and TownHall.

According to World Net Daily, the fact that money was allocated to build a portion of an interstate in Tennessee is incontrovertible proof that the battle against Mexicanadamerica has already been lost. (And did you know that Giuliani is involved??)

Take a look at this stirring letter from Ron Paul:

The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union—complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union. Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether.

Your children will be spending Ameros on disgusting Mexican candy on their way to drug cartel meetings. Also some Canadian stereotypes will be involved. (Sklar?) Even Red China will oppress us on the Hell Highway! Unless hero of the working man Lou Dobbs has anything to say about it!

Dobbs has been fighting the NAFTA Superhighway since whenever one of his producers found it on an anti-immigration message board (probably), railing repeatedly against the Unconstitutionality of this terrible road. Even avuncular loon Pat Buchanan takes cues from Lou regarding this menace to our freedoms.

The highway is especially dangerous, as Pat notes, because the Mexicans commit lots of crimes, shoot guns at children, and probably lust after white women.

Lou's role in exposing this injustice-in-the-making is so key that he's the star of this insane and awesome YouTube clip we found:

Eager to discuss what we learned about the Fox-Bush Autobahn, we clicked over to our favorite message board ever, the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC forum. In the thread called WATCH LOU DOBBS ON NAFTA SUPERHIGHWAY TUESDAY, we eagerly read the words of our fellow patriots.

In the immortal words of poster butterbean: "POOR LOU - HE IS JUST 1 MAN, WITH JUST 1 HOUR, AND SO MUCH NEWS TO COVER."

And, as GeorgiaPeach writes:

I got the impression that he was really serious about keeping the public informed about the NAFTA Superhighway. On YOUTUBE there are several videos of the segments done on Lou Dobbs in regards to the Nafta Superhighway if someone has not viewed them yet.

Ephesians 4:32
_________________
http://www.wethepeopleofamerica.org

It's true! Lou is very serious about "keeping the public informed about the NAFTA Superhighway," which is crazy code for "dazzling the rubes with imaginary threats." Lou Dobbs, friend of the little guy, is surely personally outraged that longshoreman and truckers will maybe end up out of work a dozen years from now, theoretically, once the upgrade of the existing interstate system leads to the middle of the nation becoming the continent's center of commerce. It keeps him up nights! He can barely stand to listen to his daughter talk about her horses anymore! (Please click that link. Harvard sophomore Hillary Dobbs: "my horses are jumping the best they have ever jumped.")

Yes, Lou truly cares about the fate of the working man, where the working man is defined as the white working man, and where all the threats to his livelihood involve Mexicans.

Here's more clips of Lou on the NAFTA Superhighway to Hell:

This issue of Paranoia also reveals that David Icke, the British conspiracy theorist who disclosed in a previous issue of Paranoia that the queen of England is really a shape-shifting Satanic reptile, is himself funded by money that comes from the Rockefellers, who Icke had previously identified as "reptilian full-bloods."

And that's not all. The new issue of Paranoia also has a story about Lt. Col. Tom Bearden a "microphysics wizard" who has revealed that "1) Nothing contains everything" and "2) we can get something for nothing." Bearden is a genius who knows how to get unlimited free energy but his knowledge is suppressed by what he calls "an agency with a three letter acronym." [Washington Post]

J/ORMG_BCPD/CRMDA/HQ_for_the_Americas/BTMNA 12/17/2007 01:48 PM To Grp_NYandNJ_Staff_Only_Email

Subject
Closing update: MN HAZMAT-CHEMICAL

Office of Emergency Management (OEM) reported that the event is now under
control. The event was caused by the mixing of unidentified utility chemicals on a
maintenance floor. Additional chemical sampling is ongoing, but there are
no safety concerns at this point. All the evacuated floors in the impacted
facility are once again populated.
Incident closed.

Operational Risk Management Department
Business Continuity Planning

For starters, by "there's an implication," Matt maybe means, "I would like to imply, though I can't find any evidence to support my theory."

Jakob Lodwick has no "ongoing relationship to Gawker" besides being someone we write usually-mean things about from time to time.

We found out about Patrick's website the same way we find out about most of the things we write about: we got a bunch of emails about it. No one pitched it to us, and we didn't publicize it as a favor to anyone. We don't ever do that because, a) ew and b) we don't have to!

"The price of fame has dropped to $20 a month, payable to Verizon Wireless," Matt writes. Well, right! To anyone who has been reading the Internet for the past few years, though, that isn't a particularly shocking revelation. What would be shocking: a blogola scandal whereby Jakob Lodwick and Julia Allison fed Gawker information to ensure that their protege Patrick Moberg attained fameball status!

That's not what happened, though: It didn't need to. The way the internet works is, the cream floats to the top. And by "cream," we mean "most attention-grabbingly retarded shit."

The first is that, having leaned on the First Amendment as rationale for Iranian prime minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent speech at the school (the controversial spotlight of which they so thoroughly enjoyed!), the school's administrators may be wary of the appearance of being selective constitutionalists by folding too easily on the Fourth. Hmm. Possible! Unlikely!

The second, (cue swelling conspiratorial background music), is that there is something on that tape that Columbia doesn't want in the public arena. What could it be? Some on the Internets have suggested that Prof. Constantine may have left the noose herself: Making a vague point about the Jena 6? Livening up the stunningly dull academic discourse on diversity and tolerance? Ensuring that the tenure committee will tread lightly come decision-making time?

That's pretty far-fetched. Maybe the tape just happened to catch Columbia president Lee Bollinger in a compromising position with a graduate student. Kidding! Regardless, we're curious about this one. Send your thoughts, hate mail and inside information here.

A police spokesman theorized she "tried to manipulate the handcuffs from behind her to the front, got tangled up in the process and they ended up around her neck,"-an inexplicable turn of events, according to the family.

Phoenix police are now "asking whether other substances in her body may have played a part in her becoming unconscious, leading to her death." Failing that, they'll probably suggest that she was involved in some kind of auto-erotic sexplay gone awry. An autopsy will be performed today.

Public Advocate's Daughter-In-Law Dies At Airport [WCBS]
Related: You can find all sorts of crazy in the comments on City Room.

We've heard all this and more for a while now—and we haven't believed any of it or thought any of it was true. Sure, we wouldn't put anything past any of these tin-eared mini-masters of the universe and their surround-sound systems of yes-men publicists and self-important lawyers either, particularly the ones with a taste for the flavor of teen girl. But do you really think John Connolly's going to be worried about either his editor or his subject? Once you've been threatened by infamous P.I. Anthony Pellicano, well, it's just hard to get a thrill from being leaned on by anyone else.

Back in the real world and away from the rumor mill, the piece has not yet run, at least in part, simply because Epstein's court date in Palm Beach on the Florida charges for felony prostitution was scheduled for mid-November. When Epstein went for a plea deal earlier this year and it became public in July, well, hi, it's September. It's not like Vanity Fair moves that fast. And wouldn't you imagine there's more than a few Epstein loose ends that have still gone unreported? (Pun unintended, really!)

*Seriously, is he even a "financier" any more?

The prime candidates for string-pulling action would seem to be James's former competitors Olga and Valentine Rei, the siblings behind the bizarre sociological experiment that was Socialite Rank. But they say they've got nothing to do with him and we sort of believe them! "We have not read his site for months. We're not sure anyone does. The only brief contact we've had with James was when he came to New York for the first time. We politely invited him to lunch and he was unfortunately too busy at the time. We wish him luck, though," Valentine sniffed.

A competing and perhaps more credible theory is that James may be the puppet of "writer" Derek Blasberg and muppet-faced socialite Fabiola Beracasa, who "gave James a list of what socials can and cannot be on it," according to a tipster who claims to have heard this from "a credible source."

"He stopped covering all the 'controversial' people, and all the black or asian people and the only people he puts are all the same. And just derek and lyle are the only guys." Fascinating! We've yet to hear back from James about this. Perhaps his dark overlords vet his correspondence.

According to one nightlife expert, the timing is suspicious, and maybe someone has a motive.

There's another irony in all of this!

Los Dados is a new Mexican restaurant opening this week in the Meatpacking and it is owned by the owners of Double 7 and Lotus.....

Is someone trying to "take out" their competition?

[Photo: Heronpreston flickr]

The paper notes that the Bancrofts' still have to approve the larger deal, which might be a problem: The Journal reports that Bancroft family member Leslie Hill has been "scouring the East Coast, trying to drum up other offers for the company." Her alternatives include the Philadelphia Inquirer's Brian Tierney and MySpace founder Brad Greenspan. The paper calls the quest "quixotic." The Journal also discusses the S.E.C.'s developing case against the Hong Kong couple accused of insider trading of Dow Jones shares before the bid was announced. Forbes notes that Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, has been named chief of strategy for MySpace China, her first official post at News Corp.

In the Guardian, Roy Greenslade praises Time's current profile of Murdoch: "Some deal-making, threats of deal-breaking, explanations, apologies and promises. Rarely has any journalist, especially in recent weeks, managed to paint as good a portrait of the world's greatest living media mogul."

Finally, celebrity blogger Kurt Andersen returns after a two-month absence to weigh in on charges that Murdoch's business interests in China would result in skewed coverage of the country in the Journal. Kurt raises a point we haven't seen elsewhere:

Among the scads of coverage, why has no one — like, say, the News Corp. spokesman Gary Ginsberg — mentioned 24? During the last two seasons of the series, the Chinese government has been the heavy — they shanghaied and tortured both Jack Bauer and his girlfriend, conspired with Jack's murderous father, and almost caused Russia to attack the U.S. If Murdoch were really as determined to kowtow as he's been portrayed, why would he let one of his most successful shows consistently and grandly libel his Chinese pals?

Best expression of Joycean disgust goes to Peter Sagal, who has a Funny Pages "True-Life Tale" this week about a lady grifter who gets him to give her $20 so that she can get her broken-down car towed off the shoulder. The woman gets into Sagal's passenger seat, and he recoils: "I noticed that she wasn't quite as attractive as I first thought. Her hair was dirty, and so was the back of her neck. She smelled as if she had dabbed a spot of fresh motor oil on her pulse points."

Much more—including a crazy Mayan lady and a disgusting albino— after the jump.

Weirdest idea about what it means to be friends goes to ?mbar Past for her Lives piece in the Times Magazine about abandoning her life in San Francisco and moving to a distant Mayan village in Mexico. Past's angst-ridden, vaguely magical-realist piece ends with a strange Mayan merchant-lady bringing her to her home and molesting her out of curiosity while her husband and children sleep nearby. Past recalls: "Mar a Tzu approached me slowly, as if I were a wild animal... She was speaking to me softly, hypnotically. And then, gently, she began to feel my body from head to toe." Past lies there motionless while the woman touches her "breasts," her "abdomen," and her "sex" before pronouncing with excitement, "You really are human!" Then the two women hug, and Past feels happy: "And so at last I had a friend."

Best quote that was probably never said is Past again, who quotes an unnamed Mayan native as calling her "useless" and complaining to a friend that she "doesn't know how to spin yarn, or make tortillas, or use a machete. So lazy. And boy does she smell!"

Best desire makes it a hat-trick for Past, who was moved to start a new life by a longing for "magic, poetry and genuine human warmth."

Best cat-related remark goes to this week's Modern Love essayist Lucy Ferriss, whose mother remembers her wedding day and describes herself as feeling "like the well-known cat, grinning from ear to ear!"

Worst injustice goes to Calvin R. Donaldson Jr., the equipment engineer operator who provided this week's edition of the Washington Post's populist biography column "First Person Singular." Donaldson talks about being robbed of top honors at the Professional Equipment Roadeo, an annual D.C. event that had him driving a "10-wheel dump truck with a snowplow attachment" along a "heavy-wheel plow obstacle course at RFK Stadium." Donaldson got the best time, but a vindictive judge disqualified him for running over a cone. "Someone from the judge's county won," Donaldson reports. "They wouldn't even let me redo it."

The luckiest duck award lands neatly in the lap of movie writer/producer John Klein. Writing in the L.A. Times Magazine, Klein tells a story about living in New York as an undergrad in 1965 and shooting his thesis film project. While knocking on doors in search of a fire escape to use as a location for his last scene, Klein accidentally winds up in an apartment on St. Marks Street with Milos Forman, who happens to be in town to promote The Fireman's Ball. Forman asks to see Klein's movie, likes it, and the two collaborate on a film that ends up winning big at Cannes.

Best "and so I says to him" joke goes to Matt Bai for his entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying piece in the second issue of Key, the New York Times glossy real estate supplement. This maneuver is a staple of the mini-memoir, as it allows the author to proudly recount something hilarious he or she once did, said, or thought. Bai has a few of these in his essay, which is about a strange woman who pulls up alongside his curb every day in her car, and watches him through a window while a team of contractors renovate his new house. Turns out at the end of the piece that it wasn't Bai she was after, but one of the workers. For most of the essay, though, the mystery of the stalker runs deep, and Bai lets off a few cluckers in the process with great enthusiasm. To whit: "Ellen suggested that maybe the woman had been hoping to buy the house before we did and now she just couldn't get it out of her head. I told her this made some sense. It seemed to me that anyone who had wanted to buy this house would certainly have to have been unhinged to begin with."

Best leisurely activity is Bai again: "When Ellen and I and our best friends would get together on weekends, the four of us would sit around inventing cinematic theories."

Best rumor is back to Past: when she first arrives at the village, the highly suspicious natives murmur about how she probably "stole babies and turned them into gasoline for airplanes." They also say that she might be an albino, i.e. "hideously ugly and probably rich."